Care of Magical Creatures
by 3rdTimeIsACharm
Summary: It's in Care of Magical Creatures that Rose first sees Scorpius as a sensitive, intelligent and altogether quite attractive human being. Ten years later, the two are friends with a history. How long will it take for them to move past residual shyness and learn to care for the ultimate magical creature in their lives?
1. Prologue: Platform 9 and 3-4

Welcome to the world inside my head.

Anything recognizable belongs to our queen JKR.

* * *

September 1, 2017

After her da tells her to make sure to beat Scorpius Malfoy in every class, her mum squeezes her hand and gives her an additional blessing.

"Remember that brains are not everything. I wish I had learned this earlier. Remember to judge a person not by their last name but by their actions, and above all, be kind."

Rose hugs her mum and then her da one more time, then sprints off to join her cousins on the Hogwarts Express.

One brilliant train ride filled with Scottish landscapes, pumpkin pasties, and chocolate frogs later, Rose and the rest of the first years tumble out of the train, into the little self-guided boats, and encounter the Sorting Hat.

She's sorted into Ravenclaw, and he goes to Slytherin. Her father has no reason to worry for now: Ravenclaw and Slytherin have no double classes, and he mainly keeps to himself and his close friends, and thus Rose doesn't interact with Scorpius. Thanks to her mother's positive influence, Rose stays at the top of her class, and even manages to make friends outside of the Weasley clan.


	2. Care of Magical Creatures

I'm not here to take JKR's $$$.

* * *

September 2019 - June 2021

Third year. Care of Magical Creatures. Unlike the core classes in their first two years, all four Houses are combined together for these elective classes. As such, this is the first class that Rose has with Scorpius. More relevantly, this is the first class that Rose has with Scorpius's friend, Pascal Zabini.

"He's so tall," she sighs to her best friend, Alice Longbottom, when the two girls catch sight of him and Scorpius walking to class.

Alice rolls her eyes, used to this by now. Rose has been going on about Pascal since about April of second year, and she's learned that 1, Rose will do nothing about this blatant crush, and 2, once Rose gets started on him, she won't stop until she's said all that she has to say.

"His hair is so dark and floppy and doesn't it just make you want to touch it?" Rose gushes.

Sometimes Alice wonders how Rose stays at the top of their class when such idiotic things come out of her mouth with alarming frequency. His hair is clearly greasy and unwashed, but Alice has learned better than to contradict Rose when she gets started on Pascal.

"And I heard…" Rose drops her voice to a stage whisper. "I heard that he's got abs!"

Alice nods distractedly. She has heard this also. And it makes sense: he is, after all, the Seeker for the Slytherin Quidditch team. Very few thirteen-year-olds can boast having more than just one ab.

Overall, the boy has quite an inspiring set of features, Alice muses. (Note heavy sarcasm.) Given these, Alice wonders how in the world she has not also fallen for him. More pressingly, Alice thinks, on occasions like this, that she deserves an award for Most Patient Friend. But then, she supposes, her friendship with Rose is more complex than this.

"I heard from my dad that Professor Brunet will usually pair us up when we're actually working with the creatures, why don't you try to be project partners with him?" Alice makes this suggestion knowing full well that Rose will definitely not want to do this, and is not disappointed.

"I-I couldn't possibly…" Rose stammers, turning bright Weasley red. "Besides, I want to be your partner! That is, if you also want to be my partner…"

Alice laughs and also feels a tiny wave of relief. "Of course I want to be your partner! But what kind of supportive friend would I be if I didn't encourage you to chase your dreams?"

* * *

When the first creature care assignment comes, Professor Brunet has other ideas than to let these third years choose their partners.

"As part of the effort to promote inter-House unity, we'll be drawing names randomly from a hat to determine your partners for the first half of the term." This announcement is met with groans from everyone.

Rose somehow ends up partnered with Scorpius, Alice partners with a quiet girl from Hufflepuff, Anya Clearwater, and it is Albus who ends up with Pascal.

Today's task is easy: the groups need only to set up small crates for their bowtruckles, who will take up residence in the next lesson. When presented with a heap of possible linings for their little box, Scorpius chooses the textures that are most favored by the creatures, according to the text. This surprises Rose, but then she remembers what her mother said about judging a person by their actions, and she looks a little more favorably upon this partnership. She wishes a little that Scorpius had spoken to her before lining the box the way he wanted, but she supposes that she'll have the chance to show her knowledge later.

When Scorpius finishes, he steps back and indicates for Rose to have a look. This is strange, she thinks, does he not know how to speak? Rose pokes her nose into the box and quietly speaks out loud the checklist of textures, and yep, everything is there. She looks up and meets Scorpius's eyes.

"Looks good to me," she confirms with a smile.

"Great," Scorpius responds, the corner of his mouth quirking up into a half-smile.

When class is dismissed, Rose, Alice and Albus walk back to the castle together.

"Ugh," Albus moans. "Zabini spent the entire class playing with a stupid Snitch and didn't help at all with making the box. I hope the rest of the term isn't like this, or I'm gonna poke my eyes out. Or maybe rat him out to Brunet for not contributing."

Alice and Rose make conciliatory noises, and Rose thinks maybe she actually lucked out not being partnered with Pascal, because that kind of freeloader would drive her bonkers.

"Say," Albus continues, "how's Malfoy?"

"Surprisingly not the worst," Rose says to the surprise of her audience. "He kinda just took charge and didn't talk to me but it was obvious that he had done the reading. Which is okay for now but I hope this noncommunication doesn't continue."

"And Anya?" Albus asks Alice.

"I think we'll get on well this term. She seems pretty interested in the class, and we might even be friends by the end of the term."

Rose finds, with each progressive unit, that Scorpius continues to keep up with the reading, and is prepared for their group work periods. They become more equitable as partners as the class progresses: it becomes evident that Scorpius cares more about the creatures' environments and feeding, while Rose is far more proficient, and dare she say, less queasy, when she interacts with the creatures, both in play, cleaning, and taking care of their injuries.

And with every time that Albus complains about how lazy, or how uninvested, or how useless Pascal is as a partner, Rose's crush on him goes away a little bit more, to the point where she is in a crush void. The perfect setup for the first time that she really notices Scorpius Malfoy.

Hippogriffs.

During the summer, at one of the many family picnics, Rose's parents and her Uncle Harry had reminisced about their first day of Care of Magical Creatures, when Scorpius' father Draco had, in a fit of arrogance, provoked a hippogriff and suffered minor injuries and major embarrassment.

So, it is with this backstory that Rose attends class on the first day of the hippogriffs unit. She doesn't know what she expected – maybe apprehension on his part? A refusal to approach or to participate in this lesson? But it certainly wasn't his quiet confidence in answering Professor Brunet's question about how to approach a hippogriff, and his subsequent volunteering to be the first to demonstrate proper form (which he had previously articulated perfectly). When Rose watched him slowly approach Buckbeak's grandson, Winterstorm, maintaining eye contact with the golden catlike eyes, and make a deep bow, and have that bow returned, Rose felt something open in her chest. She saw, for the first time, his high, aristocratic cheekbones, his clear, piercing silver-blue eyes, and the soft sweep of his hair. She saw his long, graceful fingers, and imagined what it would be like to lace her own with his. Most of all, she saw that he carried the name Malfoy and made conscious decisions to be a better man than his father at the same age. She wonders if it is his father's influence in the post-war era that shaped him like this, but whatever the cause, she likes what she sees.

It is this crush that leads Rose to ask Alice if it would be okay if she stayed partners with Scorpius for the second half of the year, when Professor Brunet says it is okay for them to choose their own partners.

When she asks, Alice fixes her with a weird stare. "What brought this on?"

Rose tries to temper her emotions, but ends up looking like a tomato anyways. She refuses to meet Alice's eyes.

"You fancy him!"

Rose hurriedly shushes her friend and says in hushed tones, "Well okay, yes, now that you mention it, I guess you could call it that."

"Don't you _suppo-ose_ , Rose. I know you fancy him, I can see it in your face." After a beat, Alice asks, surprised, "What is different about this crush that you are making an effort to spend time with him?"

"I don't really know… But it might be because I started liking him for who he was, the person who he showed to me in this class. Not like, say, Pascal, who I liked from a distance without any idea of what he was like as a person."

Alice wraps her arms around her friend. "You sound like you're growing up, Rose!"

"I don't even know if he wants to keep being partners with me!"

"Of course he will, Rose, you guys are like the best team in the entire class!"

Rose never finds out if Scorpius would have asked her to be partners again, because she takes the initiative and asks him during their next class. Scorpius doesn't hesitate before smiling the broadest smile that Rose has ever seen on him, and saying, "Yes, of course."

Rose and Scorpius' tentative friendship is somehow limited to just their Care of Magical Creatures class. The class rapidly becomes Rose's favorite, and she looks forward to it, and the casual hand-touches that she and Scorpius share when they are working together over a creature. Their classmates gossip about them, but when no friendship outside of the class, or vaguest hints of a romance appear, their classmates turn to other more promising topics. Which is perfectly fine by Rose, because she was starting to feel extremely awkward with all the whispers.

This partnership, and Rose's intense (one sided?) crush continue through fourth year. Alice (who changed to partner with Albus after the first half of the term – he asked, because he was fed up with Pascal) stages an intervention toward the end of fourth year.

"Rose. This is getting ridiculous. He clearly likes spending time with you, otherwise he would not have agreed to be your partner again for ONE AND A HALF BLOODY YEARS. Will you just get your shit together and make friends with him outside of class!"

"Um. How?"

"Ask him to Hogsmeade. Ask him about his pants. Talk about the weather. Ask him to owl you, for all I care!"

Rose hides her face so Alice doesn't see the blush that steals over it when she thinks about a date with Scorpius to Hogsmeade… Or his pants… But maybe the owl idea will work.

It's the next-to-last day of the term, and she still hasn't figured out how to ask him. She's gone to the Owlery to send a note to her parents (She got her exam results back today, and she's passed with flying colors. The high note was definitely the special note from Professor Brunet, saying that if Rose ever wants to visit her over the summer, she has all sorts of magical creatures in her menagerie that haven't been covered in the third and fourth year curricula who would love to meet someone as talented as Rose. She further suggests that maybe Rose would like to take on an additional period of Independent Study with Gamekeeper Rubeus Hagrid in the next year, because Rose is the most talented and passionate student in this class who she has taught in many years.) and when she exits the tower, she runs into Scorpius walking up to the Owelry.

"Oh! Hi!"

"Hi, Rose."

And without preamble, Rose blurts, "Will you owl me?"

Scorpius stares at her confusedly. "What?"

Rose conjures a piece of parchment, scrawls her address on it, and shoves it at Scorpius.

"Owl me, please? That's my address."

"Um, alright?"

"Okay! Great!" Mortified, Rose skedaddles.

Later that night, Rose and Alice sit on the roof outside their dormitory and Rose recounts what happened. When Alice finishes laughing, she promises to never let Rose live this down.

"What does it mean if he doesn't owl me? That would be terrible! And what if he does actually owl me! That might be worse! What will I do?"

"Oh Rose, you're going to have a brilliant summer, regardless of whether a silly boy wants to owl you or not."

And of course, with that positive outlook, Scorpius' first owl comes only three days into vacation. After that, Scorpius and Rose become pen pals, exchanging notes about their lives every once in a while.


	3. Fellytones

Apologies that there is very little Scorpius and Alice in this chapter, but I promise they'll be back in the future.

Standard disclaimer applies.

* * *

September 2021 – September 2022

Fifth year. OWLs are rapidly approaching, and Rose and Scorpius, after a summer of owling each other, resume their partnership in Care of Magical Creatures. In addition to class, they meet up once a week in the library to study together. But despite Alice's continued teasing and the resumed whispers from the rest of the school, nothing develops. Rose's crush is as strong as ever, Scorpius is as well-mannered and studious as ever, and outside of class and the library, the two are strangers. Rose complains about this in passing to Alice sometimes when they go to Hogsmeade, bemoaning that Scorpius never asks to go together, but looming exams prevents this from weighing too heavily on her mind.

The year passes uneventfully. The fifth years take their OWLs, and return home on the Hogwarts Express. Same as last year, Scorpius' first owl comes three days into summer hols, and Scorpius and Rose resume their penpal-ship.

* * *

A week into hols, after Rose feels that she is all caught up on sleep, her Granddad Arthur invites her to come to his office for a day. He leaves her at an unoccupied desk next to a young wizard trying desperately to look busy while he goes off for the morning's briefing, telling her to sit tight, he'll return soon. As soon as he is around the corner, Rose promptly turns to the wizard at the next desk over, and asks, "What's that?"

He twitches violently, and casts a panicked glance around, as if his manager is spying on him.

"Er, I'm not entirely sure. It came in with the report that it had been cursed to give off the illusion that the holder was being engulfed by spiders coming from this spiderweb pattern on the front." Rose shudders, and the wizard continues, "The curse has been lifted now, but now I'm supposed to figure out what the box is meant to do." He shows her the front of the little palm-sized rectangle, matte black on one side, and shiny glass on the other. It is the glass side that has the spiderweb pattern.

Rose reaches for it, curious. When the young wizard hesitates, Rose decides to introduce herself first.

"I'm Rose! I go to Hogwarts and I'm on vacation so I came here today with my Granddad Arthur."

The stranger blinks at her. "Your grandfather is Arthur… Arthur Weasley? Like the Head of Department?"

"Yes, him."

"Oh." The young wizard's face closes up and he almost physically withdraws from Rose, back into his work.

Rose barrels ahead. "No! Please don't worry, I'm not a plant or anything! I'm here because I was driving my mum and da up the wall and Granddad thought this could be a good idea for me to get a chance to see what life could be like after Hogwarts. I'm really curious about what's going on, so please will you tell me more about this spider box that you're working on? And also what's your name?"

"The name's Andrew. Andrew Golding. I graduated from Hogwarts four years ago and just finished the training academy for Ministry field work, so now it's back to shuffling papers at a desk for me. And playing with these—" he gestures at the box "—things."

"Can I hold it?" Rose asks.

Andrew passes it over. Rose turns it over in her hands. Other than the crack on the glass and three buttons on the side, the surface is smooth.

She points at the buttons. "What do these do?"

"To be entirely honest, I don't know. I didn't want to push them in the event that something exploded."

"But surely your department handles things that explode with regularity! One more little explosion surely won't harm anything." In fact, when Rose looks at the desk she is currently occupying, she sees scorch marks on the wood.

When Andrew hesitates, Rose continues, "Could you put up a local containment spell, and do your manipulations inside that bubble?"

Andrew looks thoughtful. "You know, that could work…"

"Okay! Great! Let's try it!" Rose promptly levitates the box, puts up a Localized Shield Charm around it, and is about to use a Projection Charm to push the buttons with her hands on the outside of the Shield Charm, when Andrew stops her.

"Wait. Let's record this. So I'll know what not to do with the next one." He opens a drawer on his desk and Rose sees dozens of phones waiting for testing.

When Andrew has the camera set up, Rose pushes the topmost of the three buttons. The box gives off a small plume of purple smoke but remains otherwise unchanged.

"Well that was anticli—" Rose begins, but then she sees tiny bolts of lightning coursing across the surface of the box, and with a miniature clap of thunder, the entire device goes up in a giant purple explosion. The Shield Charm fortunately holds, and when the dust settles, there is nothing left inside the containment except a heap of silver dust.

"That was fun! I wonder what is in this dust – what materials and such… I wonder if _reparo_ will work to restore the box…" She gives it a try, and the only thing that happens is the formation of a tiny tornado, which dies down.

She glances over at Andrew, who looks shooketh. Then she looks around the room and sees the eyes of all the staff on her.

"Whoops… I guess that was a bit loud."

Andrew frowns.

Rose next sees her Granddad Arthur hustling toward them, and says to Andrew before she gets hauled off, "It was nice to meet you! Thanks for letting me help you figure out what's going on, that was really fun! OK bye!"

Later that night, Rose's mother informs her that she will unfortunately not be allowed to join her granddad at work again. But also Rose senses that her mother is secretly pleased at the experimental nature that she revealed today in that escapade.

Rose thinks it's probably best that she doesn't go back to the Ministry. One thing that she tactfully decided to not ask was why employees in the Department of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts never interact with Muggles to divine the original uses of these objects. Surely some of them must have muggleborn connections, and surely a muggle consultant would be more productive than just blowing things up all day. She knows for a fact that there are muggles who are aware that magic exists; in fact, she is related to some.

It's with this attitude that Rose goes to visit her grandparents on her mother's side the next weekend.

When her grandmother brings Hugo into the kitchen to start baking a batch of cookies, she sits with her grandfather in the den.

"What new things have you learned recently, Rose?"

"The usual in school, but I really enjoyed learning about the theory of Animagi in Transfiguration. Not that I'm going to become one, but it's cool to learn how and why the procedure differs for becoming different animals. And combined with what we learn in Care of Magical Creatures, I have been really enjoying learning how other animals approach life and interactions with humans."

"It sounds like you are really passionate about working with creatures! Is this something that you will want to do as a career?"

"It is definitely my top choice right now, and I spoke with Professor Longbottom about this during career planning. He says that I could take a year after graduating from Hogwarts to intern at a creature facility, and then attend a secondary academy with a good veterinary program. That way I could focus on what I think is interesting right now, but also have exposure to other careers and change my mind if I want."

"This sounds like good advice from Neville."

Rose waits a second to see if her grandfather will say anything more on this, then she moves to change the topic.

"I went to visit my Granddad Arthur at his office last week."

"Oh? And how did you pass your time in the office?"

"Well, he left me at a desk next to some wizard who was working with a," Rose fishes around for a word, "rectangle."

Rose's grandfather nods for her to continue. He is smiling a little bit.

"It had previously been enchanted to give off ghostly spiders from a spiderweb crack on the glass side, but that had been lifted, and the wizard, his name was Andrew, was trying to figure out how the thing worked. It was like a slim rectangle with glass on one side and it was black on the other side, with a couple of holes on the edges and there were three buttons. And when we tried to push one of the buttons, the whole thing exploded in a puff of purple smoke. And I hoped that maybe you would know what the thing was."

"Hmm… I can think of something that matches most of your description, except the exploding part. But I am going to guess that's not part of its normal behavior. Did the device look anything like this?" He reaches into his pocket, draws out a little box, and extends it to Rose.

She reaches for it, and then nearly drops it when the glass side lights up. When she recovers, she looks again. The glass face of the device proclaims that the time is 14:23. This box is slightly smaller than the other one, there is no spiderweb crack, and the backing is silvery.

"What you're holding is a cell phone. A smartphone, to be exact. It's very similar in premise to a telephone, your grandfather must have introduced you to those. You can make phone calls, but also a great deal more. You can send people text messages and take pictures and play games… I could go on, but you look like you have questions."

"I think I'm still stuck comparing the thing that I blew up at the Ministry to this," she waves the one her grandfather has handed to her around a bit. "So you're saying that the spiderweb crack is not normal?"

"Yes, the glass screen often cracks when you drop your phone on the ground."

"But that doesn't break the phone altogether?"

"Yes, the majority of falls do not completely disable the phone."

"And the different size and color I guess is similar to my wand – they are shaped and sized differently, but have the same basic functions?

"Right again."

"Grandpa, will you show me how to use this? All of the features that you talked about earlier?"

This is how Rose starts her summer of learning about muggle technology. Rose and her grandfather are on the phone with her parents (because of course Granddad Arthur gifted them a fellytone for their wedding) when her grandmother and her brother return with rich and chewy molasses cookies. Rose borrows her grandmother's smartphone and she and her grandfather spend an hour writing messages to each other from next to each other on the sofa, and taking and sending photos of each other. Rose finds that the flashy games start to give her a headache, so instead returns to the messaging function.

"This seems so much more reasonable than sending owls. Or even the flying paper notes that they have at the Ministry. Why doesn't the wizarding world have these implemented?"

If she is thinking about her impatience with waiting for Scorpius' return owls, she doesn't mention it.

When she visits the next week, her grandfather presents her with a small box. Inside is a smartphone of her very own. Rose throws her arms around her grandfather in thanks, and they spend the afternoon setting it up, and sending messages back and forth to make sure it works.

However, as soon as Rose gets home, carrying her new phone, the screen blinks off and does not come back on. No matter how much Rose presses the power button, the phone does not come back on. Unfortunately there are no power sockets in the house, as all of the lights and appliances are magically operated, so she has to wait three days for the next time she sees her grandfather again to ask.

"Ah, I was worried that you weren't picking up my calls or answering my messages. I assumed it was just a teenager thing, but I see now that I underestimated you. Let's have a look, then."

But when Rose and her grandfather look at the phone together, it comes on without any problems. The battery is somewhat drained from the last week, but not enough that it would not have come on.

That night, Rose writes a letter to the Muggle Studies professor.

 _Dear Professor Kowling,_

 _My name is Rose Weasley and I will be a sixth year at Hogwarts in the fall. I am not currently taking Muggle Studies with you, but I have a question about muggle electronics. I just learned about smartphones with my muggle grandfather, and was thinking that implementing the phone calling and instant messaging features from these devices would make communication much easier in the wizarding world, and represents a significant advance from the current_ _Protean Charm. However, u_ _pon carrying a smartphone home, I discovered that this electronic does not work in the presence of magical wards. My question is, do you have any insight on how to improve the compatibility of muggle electronics with magic?_

 _Thank you for taking the time to read my note, and I eagerly await your response!_

 _Sincerely,_

 _Rose Weasley_

While Rose waits for a return owl, she learns about other forms of muggle technology. Next up is the laptop, and the word processing feature. She imagines that writing three foot essays will be significantly more straightforward and standardized if everyone digitized their writing and font size. Additionally, the larger size of laptop keyboards makes writing long pieces more feasible than the small size of the smartphones. She is also fascinated by the Internet and the vast availability of information, although some of it looks a little unreliable… and contradictory. Her grandfather shows her how to access digitized textbooks, and while Rose would love the simplicity of not having to lug around all of her textbooks all the time, she does also enjoy the feeling of turning pages, and the smell of old books. After a couple of hours, she realizes her eyes are getting tired from taking in even a limited portion of what this device has to offer, and decides that e-books are not for her.

A week later, Rose receives a return owl from Professor Kowling,

 _Dear Rose,_

 _Thank you for your excitement about muggle technology! Regretfully, I am not very well-versed on this topic, as the material in the class is predominantly anthropology – the history and culture of muggles. However, I was able to find a volume about muggle electronics, which I have enclosed._

Here, Rose pauses to look at the enclosed book, and her heart falls a little bit when she sees how slim it is. She continues reading the letter.

 _I have also included the contact information of a witch I once met when I was on vacation in America. Her name is Cecily Piros, and she is married to the CEO of a major muggle technology company. If anyone would know more about this topic, it would be her._

 _Best wishes for your studies, and please continue to send questions my way. I'll do my best to answer them, and I eagerly look forward to hearing about your progress._

 _Sincerely,_

 _Professor Kowling_

It is with low hopes that Rose opens the book that the professor enclosed. _A Guide to Electronic Muggle Artefacts_ , compiled by the Department of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts. She reads it in one night, and learns nothing except there is a huge variety of shapes, ranging from squat and round to very large and flat. There are colorful, palm-sized devices that vibrate, used for unknown purposes. All of these devices are described as containing some combination of metal and polymer, and all go up in smoke when witches and wizards try to operate them within the confines of security spells.

It's extremely disheartening.

In fact, Rose is so frustrated that she waits until after her family reunion in France to send a letter to Cecily Piros. Thanks to her family's connections in the Ministry, sending a trans-Atlantic letter goes very smoothly.

 _Dear Ms. Piros,_

 _My name is Rose Weasley and I attend the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Some time ago, you gave your contact information to Professor Jae Kowling, who teaches Muggle Studies here, and who passed your information to me when I expressed interest in muggle technology. I was recently introduced to smartphones and laptops, and I think it would be phenomenal if I could use this technology with my magical friends, but I have achieved only various degrees of failure when I try to use these devices within the confines of magic. I understand that you have connections to the upper echelons of the muggle technology scene, so I am wondering if you may be able to help me solve or clarify this conundrum._

 _Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing back from you!_

 _Sincerely,_

 _Rose Weasley_

Time passes, and the new school year approaches. Rose sees her muggle grandparents for the last time for the summer.

Her grandfather's parting words are, "Rose, we're very proud of you and all that you've learned this summer. We always thought that your mother gave upon the muggle world and all it has to offer too quickly, but we're very happy to see that you're trying to bridge this gap. Good luck with the next school year, and shoot me a text when you get it figured out!"

She hugs each of her grandparents, then meets up with her cousins at Diagon Alley to pick up supplies for the next year. She has all but given up on the idea that Cecily Piros will return her letter, but as the family is rushing out the door to the Hogwarts Express on September 1, 2022, an owl arrives for Rose. She absentmindedly takes the letter and tucks it into her shoulder bag for later reading, then strokes the owl and gives her a treat before she flies off.

The letter lies forgotten as Rose happily reunites with a very tan Alice (who has been in the Brazilian Amazon all summer with her father), and they spend the first several hours of the train ride catching each other up with their summers. They discuss all of the fit people Alice met in South America, the plants that her father discovered, the beautiful creatures, both magical and non-magical, who are losing their homes to the horrors of the muggle logging industry. Rose doesn't spend much time speaking about Scorpius, because their messaging wasn't as often or as interesting as the previous year, but they do seem to be continuing the study sessions they started last year.

She hesitates when she gets to what she's done with her grandfather, and suddenly she remembers the letter in her bag.

"I spent a lot of time with my muggle grandfather this summer, and it was really fun! They have a lot of technologies that the wizarding community doesn't have, and I've been thinking about trying to bridge that, starting with communication."

"So what have they got that's improved from owls and Floo?"

"Well you remember my Granddad Arthur's fellytone, right? Which is basically like Floo-calling, just you don't see the other person's face. Muggles do this thing called video calling, which is a combination of voice and visual. You don't have to stick your head into a fire, actually you don't need to be anywhere near a fire, but both sides need to have a device that's capable of video calling. It's instantaneous and anywhere, provided you're carrying this device."

Alice nods for Rose to continue.

Rose continues, "And instead of having to write a letter in longhand and send it by owl and wait for a response, they have instant messaging – you write your message into the same device I talked about earlier, and seconds later you can have a response!"

Alice looks thoughtful. "This all sounds great and convenient, but potentially also very distracting. But tell me why the wizarding community doesn't have this already?"

Rose sighs. "We couldn't really figure out why this summer. It looks like these devices just don't work in the proximity of magic. And when you've got security spells up, they tend to explode when you try."

Alice shudders. "So what can you do about it?"

"I don't know. Probably not much, considering that I'm sixteen and in school most of the time. But Professor Kowling put me in touch with somebody who might be able to help, she's in the States…" Rose takes out the letter and she reads it together with Alice.

 _Dear Rose,_

 _Thank you so much for your letter and for your enthusiasm! I must confess that my husband's company is not involved in the push to integrate magic with hardware, but some other companies here in the Valley are. It seems a pretty challenging problem, and very little headway has been made over the last several years. Lucky for you, opportunities to participate abound. I suppose that my letter is reaching you as you prepare for another year at school, but if you are still interested in this problem come next summer, I can recommend you to the other companies in the area for a summer internship._

 _Until then, there is a company based in Finland that builds cell phones, and if I'm not mistaken, they also have a magical integration department. I've included their contact information below, and I've also spoken with your Headmistress McGonagall about the possibility of you conducting an internship concurrent with your school term. She seemed to look favorably on the project, and said that she would speak with you about the matter._

 _Please feel free to reach out with any further questions, and these don't have to be restricted to this technology! I look forward to hearing about your development as a young witch and scientist!_

 _Best wishes,_

 _Cecily_


	4. Confessions

Dear JKR, I'm not making any moolah off of your concept.

* * *

September 2022 – June 2023

Naturally, Rose tells Professor McGonagall that she would love to participate in the internship. She will spend two afternoons a week in Finland, at the company headquarters, in the Magical Integration department.

Rose excitedly appears in Espoo on her first day, and meets a wizard in his middle twenties with sad eyes named Kalle, who says that he will be her mentor for this project. They begin a tour of the facility, she meets what seems like a million people, gazes at polished chrome machinery, has stars in her eyes when he shows her the open floor plan workspace. But this is the muggle portion of the facility. Eventually Kalle leads her to a giant warehouse-looking space in the back of the property. The space is very sparse, with a couple of desks clustered together along one wall, but the rest of the space bears evidence of the conflict between electronics and magic that she experienced that day in the Ministry. There are scorch marks on the floor, on the wall, and she thinks she sees at least one on the high ceiling.

"Well, this is our space," says Kalle, "and the team."

He introduces Rose around to the seven other witches and wizards on the team, and they give her a short presentation of what they have worked on so far. Rose finds it somewhat discouraging that their methods are very similar to the methods in the Ministry – they seem to randomly throw spells at devices at various stages of construction and degrees of usage, and the record-keeping is extremely haphazard. Rose doesn't have a chance to ask questions before most of them disperse and go home, but Kalle stays.

"So, what is your impression, Rose? What do you think you will like to do during your time here?"

Rose pauses before she speaks, not wanting to offend.

"I think the team has made good headway in identifying procedures of how not to proceed."

Kalle nods somberly, and indicates for her to go on.

"But I feel this is much like taking a finished product and trying to break it. I think I would like to try a project that approaches from the opposite direction – I would like to make component parts that are magic-compatible, and put them together. In order to do this, I will need to spend some time on the assembly line, learning what hardware goes into this device, and designing a monitor system for each part – so while we manipulate any single phone, each part will report back in a big projection its status as working or not. Once we have this system, or maybe even concurrently with the development of the system, we can try experimenting with the component parts. I think a good starting point would be a basic circuit to light up a lightbulb."

Kalle's expression has changed to one of admiration.

"I think this is a great idea. You may find that some things will not go as you planned, as is normal for experimental science, but this is a strong starting point." He checks his watch and says, "Our time for today is up, you need to return to your school. We'll start immediately on the next day."

As Rose and Kalle walk back to her Portkey, Kalle makes a final comment. "As for our coworkers, many of them have been burned by this field in the past. It seems such a noble idea, but the entrenched ideas of how to approach these questions have a tendency to… ruin dreams. But, Rose, I am glad that you have joined our team. Fresh ideas never go amiss, and maybe they will actually pan out to something. Have a good evening, and I'll see you next time."

Rose leaves with a mixture of apprehension and inspiration, and looks forward to spending more time with this team.

* * *

Nothing has changed on the Scorpius front.

This drives Rose up a wall.

Regularly.

Which also means that Alice is accompanying Rose up these walls, because Rose's favorite way to deal with frustration is to share it.

"Rose." Alice has had enough and is getting out of this constant state of being up a wall. "It is clear that he likes you as much as you like him. Oh, don't give me those tortured eyes. I see how he looks at you. I see how you both blush when you 'accidentally' touch hands. No boy stays study buddies with a girl for four years without having an ulterior motive. Just ask him out already!"

"But, why doesn't he?"

"Rose, it is 2022, and you are a strong independent woman. You are changing the paradigm at the interface of muggle and magic technologies. You don't need to adhere to societal structures if you want to ask out a boy who you've liked for eons."

"That doesn't answer my question."

Alice is exasperated. "Maybe he's embarrassed by his name. Maybe he's terrified of yours. Maybe he's terrified of YOU. It's not like there was no drama between your parents and you are certainly a commanding young woman."

"Alice, have I ever mentioned how much I love you? I don't know where I'd be without you and your sanity right now."

"Well, you can thank me by asking Scorpius out."

* * *

The next week, Rose and Scorpius are studying for Transfiguration together. Rose has finished her essay about the theory of turning water into wine, with a specific focus on how the age and maturity of the witch or wizard affects the outcome; there is no specific regulation in the wizarding community about how old a young witch or wizard needs to be before they are allowed to start consuming alcohol, but ability to perform this spell has long been used as a metric of readiness, for reasons that Rose has explored in some depth. She considers starting her essay for Potions, but decides that she's tired and will call it a night. So she pulls out the latest novel she's been reading – _The Art of Racing in the Rain_ – and settles into her armchair. She's not waiting up for Scorpius, she tells herself. They do this all the time. They finish up with whatever they were planning to work on that night, and catch up a little bit with each other's lives before going their separate ways. This is normal.

Rose realizes that she's been staring at the same page for several minutes when Scorpius asks her a question about his Transfiguration essay, and they bounce ideas back and forth for a couple minutes, until Scorpius returns to his essay and Rose returns to her book. This time, she actually starts reading, and she hears Scorpius packing up to leave just as she gets to a part which is absolutely going to trigger the waterworks… yep, there they are.

So it's with teary eyes and a dribbly nose that Rose accepts Scorpius' handkerchief, and tells him in a choked-up voice that IT'S JUST A REALLY SWEET STORY and Scorpius awkwardly pats her shoulder.

He turns to leave but turns back when Rose says, "Hey, Scorpius?"

"Yes?"

"Um, would you want to go to Hogsmeade this weekend? Er, with me? Ah, if you're, well, if you don't already have plans?" Rose knows her face is aflame and she can't meet his eyes. She wants to repeatedly hit her head on the wall. She sounds pathetic. And why did she ask if she was so sure that he wouldn't say—

"Yes, I'd like that."

Wait. What?

Rose looks up and meets Scorpius' eyes. He's smiling a little. Kindly? Shyly? He doesn't _look_ like he's playing a cruel prank. His mouth is moving. Oh. He's saying something. Rose tunes back in to hear him suggest they meet up in the Great Hall after breakfast on Saturday.

She recovers her senses enough to respond, "Sure, sounds like a plan! See you in class!" Merlin she sounds so high pitched and overeager and what will Alice think?

When Rose gets back to Ravenclaw Tower, she catches Alice's eye in the common room and they head up the stairs together, where they sit on Rose's four-poster bed and draw the blinds around them, like when they were first years and would have sleepovers, but this time Rose knows to cast _silencio_ because she anticipates some screaming…

By this point, Rose is vibrating with her untold secret and it kinda spills out. Garbled. Alice fixes her with her patented you-can-do-better-than-this glare, and Rose tries again.

"He. Said! YES!"

Alice jumps up and starts screaming, "What did I tell you! Am I ever wrong?!" And Rose joins in the screaming and the jumping up and down on her bed until both girls collapse in a giggling heap and Rose finds that she cannot keep her eyes open any longer, the giddiness having been burned off in that bout of jumping.

Alice, seeing this, tells Rose, "You get your beauty rest. We'll figure out a plan of attack for your DAAAATE after you get back from Finland tomorrow."

* * *

At 11:03 on Saturday, Rose walks into the Great Hall wearing something "cute, but casual, because you don't want him to think that you're trying too hard," with hair brushed a little longer than usual, and a touch of make-up to hide the fact that she hasn't been able to sleep from nerves. She sees Scorpius waiting for her, and goes over to him, unable to stop her smile from spreading across her face.

She stops two steps away from him, and they face each other, not saying anything for a hot second.

"Hi," she breathes.

"Hi," he says, smiling with his eyes.

They stand like this for a couple more seconds, drinking each other in, until he breaks the trance by lifting a picnic basket.

"I asked the house elves in the kitchens to pack us a lunch. I thought we could poke around in the secondhand bookstore at the edge of town, and then picnic in the little park nearby. Unless you had other things you were dying to do today?"

If Rose hadn't long since stopped judging Scorpius by the reputation his last name carried, she would be surprised that a Malfoy liked to "just poke around" in secondhand bookstores. But since she's past that, she's primarily relieved that his choice of activity is away from the most-frequented sites in the town and thus the prying eyes of their classmates, and secondly giddy at his good taste because this is absolutely a treat yourself kind of afternoon she would plan for herself. So she beams at him and says, "Lead the way, good sir!"

Scorpius shrinks the picnic basket and tucks it into a pocket of his coat, and they take the back way to town. They maintain a proper distance from each other (that Rose constantly wants to reach across to hold his hand but she manages to refrain) while they walk in mostly a comfortable silence, punctuated by brief questions about the state of each other's lives. How was the intervening day from the last time we saw each other? Any progress on that Potions essay? How are your cousins?

Scorpius holds the door for Rose when they arrive at the shop and Rose breathes in the smell of musty old books before arbitrarily running toward a shelf. She has been here before, and loves that she can occasionally find muggle books scattered among the wizarding. She shows Scorpius a collection of photography of wizarding architecture, he shows her a work of non-fiction about the urban ecology of London. She finds a how-to book of enchanted origami, and together they fold a little dragon who opens its mouth to breathe a jet of fire and instead goes up in a puff of flame. Two hours of exploring all the nooks and crannies of the bookshop later, Rose feels that the two of them have done a better job of covering the entire store than she would have alone. And she enjoyed many of the books she would not have picked up on her own. Overall, very diverting, but the entire time, when Scorpius would brush up against her to pull a book, or their fingers would touch as they passed books between them, Rose felt a strange bubbling in her chest accompanied by a desire to blurt to him that she fancies him.

However, the current trouble is the bubbling in Rose's stomach. It's audible. She's mortified. But Scorpius does what he's done this entire time – he turns and smiles at her. This time he reaches into his pocket, pulls out the miniature picnic basket, and suggests they eat.

At first, the only sound after they tuck into lunch is the sound of forks and chewing (the house elves have outdone themselves, as usual), then Scorpius breaks the silence by asking, "So, I noticed that you aren't anywhere to be found at Hogwarts sometimes. What's up with that?"

Rose files this away to tell Alice – Scorpius notices when she's not around! This means that he looks for her!

But that's for later. For now, she starts to tell Scorpius about muggle cell phones. He asks the appropriate questions at the right times: How is this different from a Protean Charm? Why didn't the cell phone that your grandfather give you combust when you tried to turn it on at home? How did the original people who generated the spider illusion do so without causing a combustion? She speaks about her internship and how this work has been challenging and frustrating and fulfilling in equal proportions, but mostly how disappointed she is when she has to take time away from working with Hagrid in their separate lessons to go to Finland. "It's not even like it's a chore," she says about going to Finland. "It's so starkly beautiful and different there, but some days I just want to sink my fingers into some musty fur and give the animal it's attached to a good rub down."

Talk turns to Rose's love for magical creatures, then to post-Hogwarts plans, then to Scorpius' interest in understanding ecoscapes – how is one different from another, and how does that affect the way that life and magic spring forth?

Before they know it, shadows are longer and they need to pack up and return to Hogwarts before the light is entirely gone. Upon returning to the Great Hall and going their separate ways, they pause a moment and resume the same positions as the beginning of the day. Standing squarely facing each other, two paces separating them.

"I had a really nice time today, Scorpius."

"Me too. See you in class?"

"Yes, see you later."

Rose feels that she is floating on a cloud when she meets up with Alice again at dinner, and over the course of the night, they hash out the meanings of every single detail, and also take time to do Alice things.

* * *

At the end of their next study session, Rose tugs on Scorpius' sleeve to get his attention as he is about to leave.

"I wanted you to know, um, I fancy you."

His face breaks into one of the first full smiles that Rose has seen on him.

"I fancy you too."

Rose feels her heart swell as they again hold their tableau positions, smiling at each other.

"Um, can I have a hug?"

It's the first time they touch each other in a full body contact, and it's awkward but electrifying and far too brief before Scorpius turns away to leave again.

* * *

Rose feels that something should have changed after they discovered their mutual attraction, but still, nothing has. They meet up once a week and study on opposite sides of the table, not touching each other. Rose wishes that they could go to Hogsmeade again, this time on a proper, official date, but he never asks, and neither does she.

Alice is the unfortunate frequent recipient of Rose's panicked self-doubt: "What are we doing, Alice?! What should I be doing?! Why isn't he like the other boys who are just all over their girlfriends? Are we boyfriend and girlfriend now? He said he fancied me too and then he just left!"

* * *

"I wish we'd do more than just hang out in class and in the library. I wish he'd ask me out."

"Well why don't you, Rose? After all, you had to ask the first time."

"I asked the first time! Shouldn't this mean that it's his turn now?"

"It's 2023, Rose, I think you know what I'm going to say."

"Yes, but sometimes I just want to feel coddled. I spend so much time being a star student who's so independent and a good role model for young witches, can't I want to feel feminine and taken care of sometimes too?"

"Does he know that you want this?"

Rose has nothing to say to this at first, then, "If he wants to be with me, shouldn't he be making some sort of effort also?"

* * *

It's during one of their regular library sessions where everything falls apart. Rose doesn't even know how she's gotten into this argument with Scorpius, but it absolutely isn't going well. She never did ask him out again, and he has been similarly mute on the matter. As a result of this, she's been kind of grumpy with him, and has bailed on a couple of study sessions. But just now, they were talking about their Care of Magical Creatures assignment, and trying to decide the best way to set up an enclosure for Occamys.

"Why does everything have to have a reason?" Scorpius demands. "Why can't you just feel things out sometimes, just go with your feelings?"

Rose feels like they've stopped talking about Occamys. She isn't quite sure what to say to this, and they both return to their respective work. However, Rose abruptly packs up to leave much earlier than usual, not offering an explanation, and Scorpius sits in stony silence, not stopping her.

* * *

After that night, Rose and Scorpius no longer speak quite as much, no longer study together. Alice has been trying to respect Rose's request to not speak about the matter after the first night, when Alice declared that it was a preposterous reason to not speak to each other, and she should just kiss and make up with him. Unfortunately, Rose's stubbornness makes a reappearance, so she replaces their usual study evening with another afternoon each week in Finland. Kalle tells her that she could honestly be reducing her hours; the monitoring system that she built seems to be working on the simple circuits that they built the system on, and on the ever more complex phone chassis as the team works to insulate individual components to magic. Kalle has written her a phenomenal letter of recommendation for her summer internship in California, and her role in Finland has effectively been reduced to writing a report detailing her work during her internship as the school year winds down, and the team becomes more adept at manipulating and further developing the system that she helped to develop. But if Rose is being honest, which she only is with Alice after all their dorm-mates have gone to sleep, she's just avoiding Scorpius.

The school year draws to a close. Rose spends more time with Alice's circle of girlfriends, who include Anya Clearwater. This study circle is not nearly as productive and invigorating as studying with Scorpius was, but since that's no longer an option ("For a stupid reason!" Alice exclaimed. "Go fix this!"), Rose supplements with a little more time on her own, and everybody passes. Soon enough, sixth year is over, the Scottish landscape is flying by on the Hogwarts Express, Rose catches up on sleep at home, no owl comes from Scorpius on the third day of vacation, and then her entire family take a Portkey to California.

* * *

A/N: I extremely recommend _The Art of Racing in the Rain_ , by Garth Stein. It's a very cute story about a loyal doggo and a very trying time in the life of his human.


	5. Summer Internship

JKR owns everything you recognize.

* * *

June 2023 – June 2024

Rose travels to California on a Thursday. Her parents will accompany her to company housing before they and her brother set out on their road trip. Her new digs are on the eighth floor of a sleek and shiny apartment building. The entire apartment is furnished – there's a California king sized bed in the bedroom (the bedroom is the size of her shared dormitory back at Hogwarts), desk space, couches and tables in the living room and dining area, pots and pans and cutlery and flatware in the chrome kitchen. When her brother turns on the flat screen TV, they discover that there are a huge number of muggle cable channels available. It's extremely overwhelming.

Tired from their travels, the family hunkers down on various soft pieces of furniture and rests for a couple hours. Rose and Hugo browse through the cable TV channels, and find cartoons, cooking shows (Rose's Grandma Molly could probably star on one of these and do better), shows where people spend the entire time screaming at each other and then kissing, weather divination, muggle sports (she thinks she'd like to give tennis a try this summer), and so many others that her head spins so she lies down on the plush carpet for a well-deserved nap.

Around dinnertime, the family prepares for dinner by slightly changing their appearances; after all, war heroes are often recognized in surprising places and they would like to enjoy this last time they have with Rose for the next two months without any interruptions. They wander out of the apartment building and emerge on a tree-lined street. They walk for a couple blocks, enjoying the cool shade and the little breeze that rustles through, and find a little mall where all the muggles park their cars in a flat lot – Rose is bamboozled at the amount of space in California and how inefficient muggles and magical people alike are with it. In this little mall, they find a massage parlor next to a pho restaurant, a Taiwanese bakery, and a burrito joint. Hugo clamors for burritos, so they have the most delicious, greasy burritos Rose has ever experienced. Top that off with the sweet, creamy, subtly spicy wonder of horchata and Rose is a very happy camper.

After dinner, they stroll around the town and find a little park where they can enjoy the dusk colours, before all retiring to Rose's spacious new digs. She half expects to find that someone else has moved in to share the space in the time they were at dinner, but there is no one.

Her mother asks if she will be lonely in this huge space on her own, and Rose suspects, yes. But she puts on a brave face and says that after she meets people tomorrow and this weekend during the orientation backpacking trip. She asks her mother to take a letter back to Alice - she'll invite Alice out for a weekend or longer to hang out.

* * *

The next morning, her family accompanies her to company headquarters to drop her off at orientation. They see a couple other families milling around the lobby saying their goodbyes, and Rose turns to her family to do the same.

"Take care, Rose. We'd love to hear from you as you learn new things this summer. We'll make sure the fellytone is set up, so we'll try to catch up with you through that. We love you."

"Have a safe trip, take pictures! I'll see you for Uncle Harry's birthday weekend in July. I love you too, mum, dad, Hugo." Rose hugs each of them in turn and they turn to go.

After some introductions to the company at large and the big picture aims of the summer internship, the cohort of seven magical students are separated from the muggles under the guise of separating into teams.

Rose discovers that this company is approaching the problem differently than the Finnish company, and furthermore is farther along in their process. The seven interns are introduced to the process, and she learns that several Squibs are involved. These individuals provide the muggle expertise that Rose thought was lacking in the Finnish company. These Squibs continued their traditional muggle education, but due to their magical heritage, were tapped for this position, developing the interface of magic and what they learned among muggles.

The interns complete the magical safety training, and meet the teams they are assigned to for the summer. Rose will be working with the Materials team – her mentor, Elena, describes it as the magical version of muggle chemistry. When Rose looks at Elena in confusion, she says, "You know how you add ingredients to a potion because of certain properties they have alone or in combination with other ingredients, and the order in which you add them matters greatly, and the end product is significantly different from the sum of its parts?" Rose nods, and Elena proceeds. "Now think of those ingredients at a much, much smaller scale, so small that a billion billion particles might be visible as a speck of dust to your naked eye. And each of these individual particles has properties that muggles know about, and some properties that are only discoverable by magic. That's where we come in. We're trying to access the magical properties of the materials that go into these phones, and using that knowledge, build a magically accessible phone. Does this make sense?"

Rose says tentatively, "Yes, I think so."

"Good. That's really all I wanted to say about that today, because for the details, you may need to catch up a bit on chemistry." Elena hands Rose a stack of textbooks and papers. "I've listed a couple of videos that might be a good place to start – you can watch them on the TV at your apartment. From there, any number of these introductory textbooks or research articles that pique your interest would be good to read. Don't feel rushed about reading them over the weekend, I think they've got a pretty busy schedule for you kids, so you can take next week to do some reading and we'll check in next Friday about what interests you and you might want to work on for the summer. Of course you should ask me any questions in the interim, but I think I need to let you go to dinner with the group."

Elena is so high energy and abrupt that Rose can only manage a, "Thank you, have a nice weekend!" as she retreats to join the group after shrinking her papers to tuck in her pocket.

Dinner is a modest affair. The magical intern coordinator takes the seven of them to dinner at an Ethiopian place a couple of streets away. It's the most flavorful food Rose has ever eaten, and she learns a little more about her coworkers during the time. She's seated between an American born young wizard, whose name is Kasper Smit, and the coordinator, in their circular arrangement around the delicious food. Rose finds that Kasper is extremely easy to talk to - they compare what wizarding school is like in Britain and the United States, aspirations for after graduation, extracurricular interests and sports. Rose discovers that Kasper plays tennis for his school, and she asks him to teach her how to play in his free time.

Unfortunately, Kasper has no free time this weekend, and Rose does not have the energy to try, because the next morning, Saturday, the interns meet up for a hike in the foothills. "To show you around the area a little bit," explains the coordinator. "And also to get you to meet each other and become friends before you start working all the time."

After the first mile or so, Rose finds herself walking with Kasper, and they once again fall into a pattern of easy conversations and comfortable quiet spells. Rose finds out that his family really dislikes camping and being outdoors, because they feel that, as a middle-class family who have worked hard to have a comfortable and clean living space, why should they pay money to be dirty and live in a tent and sleep on the ground? Rose is suitably entertained, and they spend the rest of the hike talking about other preposterous things their family and friends do.

The crazy thing is, at a couple points in their conversation, Rose thinks that he might actually be flirting with her.

* * *

On Sunday of the first weekend, Rose has arranged to have dinner with Cecily Piros. Cecily appears on Rose's doorstep beforehand, and takes Rose (and a bottle of her father's favorite firewhiskey which she's bringing as a gift) for Side-Along Apparition to her home in the rolling foothills. Rose continues to be shell-shocked at the prodigal use of space, but simultaneously marvels in the beauty of the architecture and the surroundings. The house is separated from the neighbors by a light wooded area, and when she steps outside onto the patio where Cecily's husband is barbecuing, she breathes in deeply of the fresh, dusty air mixed with the mouth-watering aroma of charred meat.

Rose is a little tongue-tied at first, in the presence of this high-ranking muggle, but she finds that he and his wife are both very down-to-earth, and they converse easily over hamburgers, lamb kebabs, and grilled fruit. She tells them briefly how she got interested in muggle technology and as much as she is allowed to speak of her internship in the past year. Cecily's husband speaks about his company and asks Rose insightful questions about magical interfacing. Rose rapidly understands why an accomplished and beautiful witch such as Cecily married a muggle.

By the time Rose thinks to look up from her conversation with her hosts, night has fallen. And the views… they are spectacular. She sighs audibly when she looks upon the Bay Bridge just beyond the trees, the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, and the sparkling lights of San Francisco in between. It's also dark enough at the house that when Rose looks up, she can see a smattering of stars. She sees Ursa Major, and Orion's Belt very clearly, and revels in the views.

She excuses herself to go home to rest for her day of work tomorrow and thanks her hosts profusely, and Cecily tells Rose to not be afraid to reach out to her if she's ever in a bind during her stay. Rose Apparates back to her apartment on her own, and falls into bed, still seeing stars.

* * *

Kasper is not unattractive. He's only half a head taller than Rose, who is not very tall at all, dirty blonde and blue eyed, and full of wiry muscle from playing tennis. And Rose, now that she's a few months removed from her undefined relationship with Scorpius and breakup masquerading as a random fallout between friends, may actually feel something for him. She feels _comfortable_ around him, and finds herself wondering about the feasibility of a relationship. Or a summer fling.

So she finds herself watching him a little more carefully in the next two weeks. Work flies by, and Rose is learning so very much all at once and loving every minute of it. After the first weekend outing, the interns try to have dinner together a couple times a week, either at a restaurant, or at somebody's apartment, where they all cook and clean together and put together meals of their various home cuisines. They go hiking almost every weekend, and sometimes explore the city and the beaches and beach towns on the Pacific Coast.

During these group outings, Rose sees that Kasper has the same easy conversational ability with everyone he talks to, and he is fond of teasing. She wonders if he is just the type to flirt with everything and anything that moves, but every time this thought comes up, they drift together in their activity and he turns his golden tongue on her again and she forgets whatever concerns she had previously.

She supposes that maybe he spends more time with her than with the other interns, who have similarly started drifting into their own little cliques.

* * *

Alice makes plans to visit Rose one weekend. She'll arrive on a Friday afternoon, and take a Portkey directly into Rose's apartment.

That afternoon, Rose has a long incubation for her experiment, and is able to leave work relatively soon after lunch. Kasper's experiment, on the other hand, blew up in his face and singed his eyebrows a bright fuschia, but this means that he, too, has the afternoon off. They decide, over the company messaging system, to take the afternoon to play a little tennis.

When Rose sees his eyebrows, she cracks up.

Pouting, Kasper tells her that if she keeps this up, he won't teach her how to play tennis. This effectively stops Rose's ugly cackles, but does not erase the sparkle in her eyes as she unconsciously reaches out for his eyebrows. However, when her fingers make contact with his face, it finally clicks for her what they are doing and she meets his eyes.

His pupils are dilated, and his hand has moved from his side to reach to her.

Rose springs back. "I apologize," she stammers. "I've crossed a line." When he says nothing, she continues, "Would you still like to play some tennis?"

Rose is atrocious, but Kasper is patient with her, wrapping his hand around hers to show her how to hold her racket, hands firmly but gently positioning her limbs to show her how to stand in the ready position. By the end of the hour and a half they spend on a court, Rose is able to gently bat a forehand over the net with reasonable form. They leave the court, with Kasper cheerfully rambling on about "building your cardio" and "running lines" and "working on your footwork" and "what about that backhand" and "don't get me started on talking about serving." They return to the apartment building, and are still chatting as Rose opens her door, to find Alice lounging on Rose's couch.

"Alice! Oh my gosh! I lost track of time and we got sidetracked getting snacks after playing tennis—" she gestures at the boba that she's holding. "But what am I saying, this is Kasper, he's another one of the interns this summer, and he's just been patiently teaching clumsy old me to play tennis. Kasper, this is Alice, my best friend in the whole world, and she's visiting me from home."

Introductions made, Kasper suggests that they all go out for dinner together, and excuses himself to wash up first. As soon as the door closes, Alice hisses at Rose, "You didn't tell me that he's hot!"

"Hot? I suppose he's okay. He has a really friendly smile," Rose comments somewhat dreamily. "I touched his face today and we had this really weird moment then kind of went to play tennis and ignored it."

"Are we also going to ignore that he just asked you out?"

"He did?"

"Yes, just now. You should remember, you were there."

"When?"

"Dinner! I'm chaperoning, but I'll happily make up an excuse to say that I'm tired and need to rest if you want it to be just you two."

"Are you tired? Can I offer you some water? Did you find my bathroom? Do you want to take a shower? That's usually what I like to do after taking a long-distance Portkey."

"Rose, stop avoiding my question."

"No, it's just something that the interns do, we eat together often enough."

Alice raises an eyebrow. "Other people are coming other than us?"

This gives Rose pause. "It did kinda sound like it would just be the three of us. Should I be freaked out? What does this mean?"

Alice sighs. "You were just about to go along with it, perfectly normally. I suggest you do that."

"But I can't be normal anymore, now that you've brought this up!" Then, after a moment, "Alice, please come along for dinner, I'd really appreciate if you shared your impression of him."

* * *

"He couldn't take his eyes off of you all dinner."

"You're pulling my leg."

"I am serious. I swear to Merlin. This is not to say that he was not accommodating and made me feel welcome, but, damn, Rose, what is it with you and blondes?"

* * *

Rose's summer project has taught her she definitely does not want to pursue a career in this field after Hogwarts, because she often feels that she is just throwing money and complicated toys at a problem for limited results. However, someone inside the company has made more progress, and by the end of the summer, the company has a prototype. They offer to set the interns up with beta units, and Rose jumps on this. The first text that she sends is to her maternal grandparents, and they are thrilled to learn about this development.

The night before the program ends, one of the interns who lives locally borrows his parents' car, and all seven of them drive out to see some stars. Rose has never done this anywhere except the Astronomy Tower, so the concept of laying out on a blanket under the stars, near a boy who she probably fancies, but probably also shouldn't start anything with because of long distance, is enticing. Rose and Kasper end up on the same blanket, to no one's surprise. As Rose sits back, she feels fingers intertwine with her own. She blushes and meets Kasper's eyes. They share a little, secret smile, and when Rose lies down, she is curled up in the curve of Kasper's arm, pressed securely to his side, their fingers interlaced.

After the interns return to the apartment building, Rose and Kasper end up on Rose's couch, talking about nothing. Rose eventually can't keep her eyes open any longer, and Kasper carries her to her bed. The next morning, Rose is preparing to take the Portkey from her apartment when she hears a knock at her door. On the other side is Kasper, looking a little worse for the small amount of sleep he has had.

"I couldn't let you leave without knowing…"

"Knowing?" Rose prompts, butterflies in her stomach threatening to burst out.

He takes a step closer to her. Reaches out to cup his hand around her face. "Rose, can I kiss you?"

And that's how Rose gets her first kiss – it's a little fumbling but completely perfect and it makes Rose's heart bloom.

They step apart again, and Rose is biting her lower lip, as Kasper, who is sporting a ridiculous smile, says, "We'll keep in touch, yeah? You have my number." He winks and watches as Rose's Portkey activates and takes her home.

* * *

When Rose arrives on her doorstep at home, she already has a message from Kasper.

K [1701]: Miss u already~

Rose smiles to herself before she notes with a start the time difference – they had barely gotten three hours of sleep the night before, and she left in the morning, and it is suddenly time for dinner already? Perhaps their night of stargazing actually worked out – this way she will be able to get to sleep tonight at a normal time.

She sends off a return text to Kasper, and goes inside to see her family.

R [1718]: Miss you too! Gotta go hang with my family for a couple hours, but tty soon!

Rose has dinner with her family during which she shows off her new phone. She makes a show of calling their house telephone from her little handheld, and everyone delights when the house phone rings appropriately. Rose makes plans to visit both sets of grandparents, because she knows both will supremely enjoy this new toy.

Rose is about ready to fall asleep where she stands by the time the sun goes down, but checks her phone for messages from Kasper before she passes out completely. There are many. Apparently each time he did something that reminded him of her, he texted. When she replies, she gets a return text almost immediately, so she lies in bed texting Kasper until she falls asleep. Her final thought is that she didn't get a chance to ask him what would happen to _them_ now that they are on separate continents.

* * *

September 1 rolls around again, and Rose and Kasper have been messaging each other progressively less since the first day, but still keeping up a couple messages every day. She realizes that his tone remains light and conversational, but lacking his physical presence and inflection of speech, she does not feel the same urgency to keep up this constant messaging, often at odd hours to accommodate their time difference.

And besides, now she's back at school and in the midst of ramping up for NEWTs. Not to mention, she also has the presence of Scorpius Malfoy to deal with.

They manage to avoid each other pretty effectively for the first couple weeks, much like the end of the previous year. It helps that Rose now has a functional phone that she can glance down at when she doesn't want to – or can't – meet Scorpius' eyes outside of class. It doesn't really matter if she has a notification or not, just smiling slightly at her phone seems to convince him fairly effectively that she's moved on from him.

She doesn't see the flickers of hurt on his face when he sees her doing this.

Rose's good luck does not hold, and they're assigned as project partners in Potions.

He's perfectly polite and they talk only schoolwork. They decide to meet up in the library to work on their project, and at no point does either of them bring up the matter that broke their tentative friendship-bordering-on-relationship from last year. This is not to say that it is not constantly on Rose's mind as they work together.

But the project is over soon enough, and she discovers that working together with Scorpius on homework is still as productive as last year, and they are still as efficient as ever.

It comes as some surprise when, after their Potions project is several days behind them, Scorpius spontaneously asks Rose if she would like to resume their library homework sessions.

A small voice in Rose's head points out that this is the first time that he's taken the initiative to ask her to do something. Maybe something changed for him this summer. Maybe she shouldn't be so hasty to close this chapter of Scorpius in her life. But she's changed this summer and she has Kasper. Had? She's not sure of the tense. They don't speak as much these days; it seems they've more or less run out of things to say.

But she accepts Scorpius's request to be study buddies again, and they fall into an old and familiar rhythm.

* * *

Seventh year passes peacefully in this fashion. She sees Scorpius in class and in the library one night a week, sometimes more if they have a project to work on together. He is nothing but professional, and she has Kasper to write to. When she's not studying, she spends her free time with Alice and Anya and their friends, gossiping and gallivanting about Hogsmeade and occasionally having study parties or sleepovers.

In March, Kasper writes that he will be visiting his grandparents in the Netherlands over Easter weekend. He asks if she'll have time that weekend to meet up; he can take a Portkey to her. His timing is very lucky, that's fortunately a Hogsmeade weekend, and she gives him a time and a place that she can meet up with him.

He appears Saturday noon at the edge of town, where Rose and Scorpius had their picnic so many years ago. But Rose is definitely not thinking about that as she goes to embrace Kasper. Much like the last time they saw each other, he cups her face in his hand and runs his thumb along her cheekbone. He bends to kiss her and she stiffens and steps away.

"What's wrong, Rose?"

"I'm happy to see you, but…" Rose looks at her feet.

"But?"

"It's just, since we met, we've spent much more time apart and growing and changing separately, that I feel that I don't know you well anymore. And it feels strange to just jump right back in and be intimate again."

Kasper sighs. "I see where you're coming from. But Rose, you're still as dear to me as the end of the summer. Will you let me hold your hand this afternoon, and reconsider kissing later?"

His hope is so infectious that Rose just has to smile and take his hand.

They walk back into town, where they meet up for lunch with Alice and Albus at the Three Broomsticks. The four of them get on famously, Kasper regales them with tall tales of America and Rose does not stop smiling the entire time.

After lunch, they part ways with Alice and Albus and meander around Hogsmeade. Kasper will take his return Portkey from the same location, so they slowly drift from shop to shop, snacking on liquorice wands and other "curious British flavored candies." They have about twenty minutes left when they arrive at the secondhand bookstore that Rose and Scorpius had such a good time in the year before, but when Kasper suggests they go in, Rose's face closes slightly and she suggests that they sit in the park and shoot the breeze. Kasper fixes her with a puzzled stare but goes along with it. They sit on a park bench and Kasper puts his arm around Rose's shoulders, and Rose hesitates before removing his arm.

"We should talk."

Kasper sighs.

"It's not you. I had a really lovely time this afternoon and you've been nothing but fantastic to me. But this afternoon has really given me a taste of what I'm missing out on by having a long distance relationship – I want to be able to see you regularly and hold your hand, for you to hang out with my friends, and not feel like our life together has to be on hold until the next time we see each other. So I feel that it would be irresponsible for me to keep you tied down when we're still so young. Do you understand?"

When Kasper says nothing, Rose continues, "I am really sorry. If we were both in the same location, or even time zone, maybe things could be different. I would like to continue being friends, but if that's not something that you want, I understand."

Kasper stands up abruptly. "I should go. It was good to see you again, Rose." He reaches for his Portkey, and with that, he is gone.

* * *

Rose walks purposefully back towards Hogwarts, needing desperately to find Alice and spill all. Unfortunately, she runs into her young cousin Lily first. Lily is wonderful, really, she is, but when she squeals, "Rose! You and your boyfriend are so cute together! Will he come back to be your date for the Leaving Ball?" Rose just wants to wring her neck. Or tear out her vocal chords. Whichever option would clear up the storm clouds that just appeared on Scorpius's face as he walked past them.

So Rose has to settle for mumbling, "He's not my boyfriend."

* * *

Something has changed in Rose and Scorpius' library sessions. Rose can't quite put her finger on what the change is, but she suspects a reason. A reason that is no longer valid, since she hasn't heard from Kasper at all since they parted. She itches to address it, but she isn't sure if it would be appropriate to, given their ill-fated not-relationship last year. Besides, he never gives her the chance, talking only schoolwork until they part ways at the end of the night.

The mood among the seventh years is more than just a little frenzied in the weeks leading up to their graduation. In addition to having NEWTs still hanging over their heads, their hormones are activated by the prospect of the Leaving Ball, and specifically, finding a date. Rose tries to avoid it as best she can, burying herself deeper in her studies. Still, she's not deaf to it all – she hears through the grapevine that Scorpius has asked none other than Arugula Flint to be his date. Rose isn't hurt at all; why should she be? It's none of her business what he does outside of their short hours in the library. Even though Rose doesn't care one bit about who Scorpius goes to the ball with, Alice comes to find her in her far back corner of the library that night, and they study in silence together, and Rose appreciates immensely not being alone.

She lets Albus set her up with his Quidditch teammate Lyle Wood.

* * *

Suddenly examinations are upon them, and all life halts to make room for last-minute cramming, and Rose mothering over her cluster of friends to make sure they are fed, watered, and well-rested for their exams, because she knows from experience that's what they most need.

And as suddenly as they arrived, the examination period has passed, leaving only nastily exhausted seventh years in its wake.

* * *

A/N: I MISS CALIFORNIA *cries*


	6. Tying Up Loose Ends

Lucky you.

JKR owns everything that you recognize.

* * *

June 2024

There are three days between the end of the examination period and the Leaving Ball. Then it's another three days to graduation, and leaving Hogwarts on their final train out.

Rose spends the first three days recovering from her nasty exhaustion by napping in every conceivable comfortable location on the sunny grounds and hanging out with her friends in Hogsmeade, where they have been given free rein to visit for this week. She finds time in the mornings to visit Hagrid and his creatures, wanting to immerse herself back into the world of magical creatures as a prelude to her internship and intended continuing education.

Hagrid still chuckles every time he sees her, but he's long since given up on trying to convince her not to come since she's graduating soon.

"That's hardly a good excuse," she protests. "That means I should take full advantage of having all the wonderful, healthy creatures in the Forbidden Forest at my fingertips for these last few days before I go back to the city and their creature shelters. Also, what kind of letter of recommendation would it be if you had to write, 'The applicant slacks off at the slightest excuse and prospect of a vacation?'" She's already asked for Hagrid's support for her application to a four-year dragon keeping apprenticeship in Romania, at the same facility as her Uncle Charlie.

* * *

On the day of the ball, Rose planned to sleep in, only to be rudely awoken by Alice clamouring for hair and make-up.

"Just one more hour."

"No."

"Thirty minutes."

"No, get up, Rose."

"Fifteen."

"Ten, and that's the most you're getting."

Rose rolls over and is out in an instant, but it only feels like two instants since Alice said ten minutes and she's being unceremoniously dumped out of her bed.

Several harrowing hours later, after every part of her body has been scoured and poked and prodded and painted various different shades, and her hair has been pulled aggressively, Rose has to admit that Alice and her friends have done a good job, and taken someone who wouldn't be able to identify the business end of a make-up brush, and transformed her into a fairy princess. She's wearing an asymmetric A-line jade green dress, has a French manicure, her hair is up in a magnificent 'do and not frizzy for the first time in her life, and is she wearing just enough make-up to glow – especially on her eyes.

Their little entourage goes downstairs to meet their dates, each one more dapper than the rest. She takes Lyle's arm and together they proceed into the Great Hall.

The Great Hall has been completely transformed: the four long tables have been replaced with smaller, circular tables, each sporting an assortment of finger foods. Fairy lights hang over the infinity dance floor, where a live string quartet is keeping things mellow while people eat.

A disco ball descends from the ceiling and a more upbeat DJ replaces the strings as people start finishing their dinners (it was excellent – the house elves have outdone themselves again) and drifting toward the punch bowl and the dance floor. Rose's group joins this migration, and they dance in a group for a short while before Rose rapidly becomes bored and excuses herself to Alice and Lyle. Alice protests more than Lyle, which is still not very much, and as Rose walks away, she sees out of the corner of her eye Sadie Bai move to dance next to Lyle. Good for them, Rose thinks. She saw her making eyes at him over dinner, and is happy that he might get some action after all tonight.

* * *

Rose ends up in a side courtyard outside. It's lit by fairy lights, again, and seems to be lightly heated to stave off the evening chill. She sits on a bench, and a lady lightning bug alights on her hand when she holds out some offerings she swiped from dinner.

Scorpius finds her communing thusly with the insects when he also comes outside. He stops abruptly upon seeing her, but before he can change his mind to go back inside, she notices him.

"Hi, Scorpius," she says, without moving.

"Hi, Rose," he responds stiffly, taking another step outside.

"Fancy seeing you out here," she jokes lightly. "Whatever happened to… Arugula?" Rose realizes with a start that this is the first time that she's conversed with Scorpius on a topic outside of schoolwork in over a year.

He makes a face. "She was making wedding plans over dinner. Then she tried to pull me aside, presumably to seduce me in a broom closet, after dinner, but I managed to convince her that I had really bad food poisoning. And now I'm here."

Rose laughs. "Bathrooms are that way." She points in the direction of the dance floor.

"It's not funny!"

Rose ignores this and continues chuckling, and Scorpius eventually concedes. "Okay, maybe it's a little funny, now that I've escaped."

Scorpius sits down on the bench next to Rose and they sit in companionable silence, punctuated by the occasional chuckle from Rose. Scorpius breaks the silence by asking, "Why are you out here? Didn't you attend with… what's his face."

"Lyle Wood. Yeah. I'm… just not that interested in him. He's fit and all, from Quidditch or whatever, but he's just kind of boring. Kept talking about Quidditch all dinner, so I was more than happy to leave him be when I saw Sadie eyeing him."

"Bai?"

"Yeah, how many other Sadies do we know?"

There's a comfortable lull in the conversation, which Scorpius has to go and ruin by asking, "And what about your… American?" His tone is light, but he manages to make _American_ sound like a swear word. "He couldn't be bothered to escort you to your graduation ball?"

Rose sighs. She's a tiny bit relieved that he brought this up, so she can finally come clean with him. But mostly annoyed, so she lets him stew for a couple minutes. But she has to say something before he leaves in a huff…

"His name is Kasper. And he's not my boyfriend," she blurts abruptly. "I broke up with him that day in Hogsmeade because I couldn't keep up with the long distance."

"Oh."

"Yeah." A beat. She doesn't really want to go back inside, but it's getting really awkward out here. "Okay, I better go back to Alice and them. Bye, Scorpius."

She gets up to leave, but hasn't taken two steps when she hears Scorpius ask, "Rose, will you do me the honor of giving me this next dance?"

She turns around to see him, standing, his hand extended to her, his face open and hopeful. She hasn't seen an expression like this on him since the night they confessed to fancying each other, and that seems like a lifetime ago. She would be lying if she said that she was completely over him, so she stays. She takes his hand and steps closer to him. But much like their one trip together to Hogsmeade, they keep a proper distance from each other. The music piping from inside turns to a slow song, and Rose can vaguely see couples forming on the dance floor. What coincidental timing, she thinks.

They sway under the fairy lights, and Rose can't help but notice that he looks as good as ever. The same high cheekbones, the same warm blue-grey eyes. The eyes that are currently locked with hers, with an intensity that makes her feel that he's probing her soul. The eyes that have drifted. South. They're staring at her lips now. Rose doesn't know what this means. They have barely spoken for the last year. The song ends, and Rose and Scorpius stop swaying. His eyes come back up to meet hers, and neither moves from their slow dancing position.

"Rose," his voice is rough. Full of emotion. It makes her toes curl to think about that voice in a different situation – in a broom closet, waking up next to him in the morning. But no. Focus, Rose.

"Scorpius." She finds that her mouth is so dry.

"Can we still be friends after we graduate?"

"Of course!" It wasn't the question she expected… or hoped for, but it will do.

His old, familiar face-splitting smile reappears and Rose thinks that maybe this evening was not a complete loss. She's a fairy princess tonight, and she realizes with a start that they match – his dress robes are a deep, rich forest green and perfectly complementary to her bright jade. This is enough to convince her to return his face-splitting smile, and he pulls her in for a hug. They spend the rest of the evening seated on the bench, catching up on developments they've missed in the last year, and talking about graduation, their plans for the future, their hopes and dreams and fears.

* * *

Early the next afternoon, Rose is trekking back up to the castle after helping Hagrid with the hippogriffs – feeding and grooming them, and mucking out their space. She's sweaty and covered in bits of fur and feathers but fortunately has escaped their claws and beaks. She suspects that That Smell might just be permanently embedded in her nostrils and is experimentally exhaling forcefully when she hears her name called. She looks up and sees blonde hair flopping as Scorpius jogs toward her from the greenhouses. He's carrying a bundle of something, probably herbs considering where he's coming from. She pauses a moment to wait for him to catch up and they fall into step.

"Sorry about the smell," Rose begins without preamble.

"Didn't notice it," Scorpius lies easily from his arm's distance from Rose as they walk.

"Riiight. I believe you. So you wouldn't mind if I did this-" she throws her arm around his waist and he wrinkles his nose but does not pull away. "So what were you doing at the greenhouses?"

"Needed some artemesinin for my trip to South America in the fall. Professor Wolf said that I could get some from Professor Longbottom, and now with these cuttings I can dry and use some of them and use the others to try my hand at propagation in my dad's greenhouses."

Rose's arm is still around his waist and it's starting to feel awkward, but then he throws an arm around her shoulders and she stops thinking about withdrawing her arm. They're friends. They talked about this last night. Friends can embrace each other. This is normal. She'll just keep telling herself this.

She's also definitely not comparing it to how Kasper's arm around her shoulders felt on the afternoon that they broke up. Nope. Also, Scorpius' feels nicer.

"Ahh, right, mosquitoes and malaria. Shouldn't we have a spell for keeping away the mosquitoes by now?"

"Yes, but it has about the same effectiveness as a Muggle mosquito net – it's mostly protective but it's not perfect. So I needed to carry some backup plan."

"Gotchu."

They fall into a companionable silence as they walk along, each caught up in their own thoughts. Scorpius considers asking her if she knows that school is over and she doesn't need to do work anymore, but she breaks the silence first.

"Scorpius, what happened?"

When he doesn't respond immediately, she clarifies, "To us."

Another pause. They've stopped walking. Rose starts to pull her arm away but his hold on her shoulders is tight.

She is about to say that she didn't think their relationship had a fair chance, but he speaks first.

"We both… Well, we were younger," he finishes lamely.

She snorts a laugh. "That's hardly an excuse."

"Well, yeah. I'm sorry. I would do things differently a second time around."

She doesn't look at him when she says, "I'm sorry too. We were so painfully shy back then…"

She doesn't see him maintaining eye contact with the back of her head, with a look that almost reads like, "Do you want to try a second time, right now?"

"And now we're going away…" She turns her face back up to him, a small, sad smile on her face, "Promise me you'll stay in touch, Scorpius."

He grins shyly at her. "Did you hear that the company you worked for last summer released its phone?"

"Whaaat! Why would they not tell me this!"

Scorpius fishes a phone out of his pocket. This means they have to separate, but it's okay, because now he's holding a phone that's shinier and newer than hers. His eyes are sparkling. He pushes the power button, and the screen lights up.

"Could I get your number, Rose?"

She gives it to him. He sends her a text so she'll have his number. They continue walking back to the castle, and part with a hug.

* * *

A/N: Lorde, "Supercut"


	7. Gap Year

Standard disclaimer applies.

* * *

June 2024 - June 2025

Scorpius' first text message comes three days after graduation. Rose smiles at the irony of it, and wonders if he's doing this on purpose. He's vacationing with his mates in the south of France and he sends her photos of the beach, the sea, and adorable cobblestone streets lined with quaint houses. She responds with photos of geysers and dramatic landscapes – her family is vacationing in Iceland. They exchange pleasantries but the majority of their exchange consists of photos from where they are, and unspoken wishes that the other was there. But by the end of the summer they each feel that they are a little closer to friends than they were previously.

When Rose starts her internship at the Piccadilly Urban Shelter for Magical Creatures, she finds that the work is significantly more high pressure than she had expected. It's true that Hagrid prepared her exceptionally well for the technical aspects of the job, but there are just SO MANY creatures that require attention and a great deal of care. The city is not a forgiving place for magical creatures who are more suited to quiet mountains, forests, open fields, lakes and rivers. One day the team even recovers a partially metamorphosed fire frog in a gutter.

Each time a new animal comes in to the shelter, several groups are mobilized: one to ready the accommodations for the creature and one consisting of medical veterinarians. Preparing creature enclosures is significantly easier for small animals, but thanks to technology developed by and still in use from Newt Scamander's day, space is unlimited. However, wrangling larger creatures into the small magical opening often proves a challenge. The medical team assesses the creature's state, determines what degree of medical attention is required, and begins the administration, all while attempting to coax the animal into an appropriate holding pen. The crew who brought the animal usually hurriedly rush through paperwork before leaving the facility to respond to another report of a magical creature on the loose – and there are never shortages of these.

During Rose's two-week training period, she rotates with every group, spending a day or two shadowing each job. The purpose of this rotation period is twofold: first for the facility administrators to determine which group she would be most helpful with, and second for Rose to determine which group she most prefers joining, with heavier preference given to the first option. Three of the new interns are placed with creature retrieval, two relatively more well-traveled interns with experience in ecology are placed with the habitat development team, while Rose, with her steady hands and extensive training from Hagrid, and one other are placed with the medical team, doing the most basic tasks of calming the creature and creating simple splints.

Rose and the other interns quickly settle into the routine at the shelter, or as much of a routine that they are able to find in the mad hectic rush of taking care of magical creatures lost in the city. Even on days when relatively fewer new creatures come in to the facility, there is always something to do – checking up on the state of the current residents, tidying occupied spaces, maintaining the inventory for the facility, returning recuperated individuals to their natural habitats or creature preserves, and cleaning out recently vacated spaces, just to name a few. But Rose loves it – she enjoys getting to know her colleagues during their brief moments of respite, learning their motivations for staying in this line of work; she delights every time a creature is deemed well enough to return to its original habitat; and she marvels in the huge diversity of creatures that she attends to. Life finds a way, she muses, when thinking about the dingy conditions in the city and the way these creatures were living before they came to the facility.

There is one aspect of this work that she has trouble reconciling, though. She knows it's inevitable that not all creatures will make it: sometimes their injuries are just too severe, and often the team is stretched too thin to give the creatures the attention they need.

The first time that a creature passes away when Rose's team is attending, she goes home to her shared flat with her cousin Albus and cries for half an hour before texting Scorpius.

R [1801]: Hey, how's your day?

S [1809]: Tiring… I'm currently on a short break. We're building today. Well. We build every day. This week we're plumbing. I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't this. Not that this is bad. It's like, we made plans to increase these folks' access to potable water, and we're putting in a couple wells, but we're in a bit of a conflict with another team because it turns out that the folks out here don't really have permanent shelters, so the other team out here has construction plans and materials, so we've been helping with the grunt work of the construction before we can get started on our wells and phew. It's just been really crazy. I'm glad you messaged, I thought I was going crazy.

S [1810]: Enough about me. How are you?

R [1815]: I'm also glad that I messaged you. Some perspective is nice sometimes… Today was the first time a creature died in my care, and I've been crying.

S [1817]: Oh hey I'm so sorry to hear that… Would you like to speak over the phone?

R [1818]: That would be really nice, but I don't want to take you away from your work helping people…

S [1819]: We usually stop working around 1600h local time, so if you're still awake in 3 hours, we could do that?

R [1821]: Yes, sure, that will work great for me. I'll cook dinner in the meantime.

At 21:11 Rose's phone rings and she nearly falls off the couch in her hurry to pick it up. Albus looks at her strangely as she all but sprints into her bedroom and closes the door.

"Hey," she breathes into the phone.

"Hi Rose," comes Scorpius' voice. "How was your dinner?"

Rose feels herself tearing up. "It's so nice to hear your voice," she says as soon as she can without choking up.

Without missing a beat, Scorpius responds in kind. She can hear the smile on his face. There's another pause until Rose remembers the question he posed initially.

"Dinner was good. I made a chicken and wild rice dish with extra spice." She laughs. "It's always fun to watch Al fight with his love of flavor and his inability to handle any heat whatsoever. Plus I've got leftovers for lunch tomorrow."

They shoot the breeze for a couple minutes more until Scorpius says, "So. Tell me."

And Rose does. Scorpius makes conciliatory noises when Rose's waterworks start again, and he patiently talks her through her feelings, asking why she feels that it's a personal failing, how her colleagues respond to creature passings. She responds that she suspects that many of her colleagues lose bits of their humanity each time this happens, walling off their emotional selves from their work so they at times appear brutal in the efficiency of the motions they take for work; others turn to substances to dull the pain, and others have spoken about having a lifeline, something to ground themselves when they encounter instances such as this. She confesses that she's afraid of either of the first two happening to her, and she has great fear about entrusting herself to any other person to the extent that the third demands. Eventually Rose runs out of things to say about this, and finds that she feels lighter. Still sad, but less burdened and less alone in this horrible progression of life and death.

They continue talking about little things, catching up, gossiping, telling jokes until Rose can't keep her eyes open anymore and she resignedly has to tell Scorpius that she has an early morning tomorrow, but thanks so much for listening (she somehow doesn't think this conversation would have been as productive as if it had been with a cousin), and she'd really like to call again sometime.

She writes about this in her personal statement for her application to dragon keeping academy. She vividly describes the creature, the rush to stabilize the creature's condition, the quiet when they realize they've failed, the feeling of not having time to mourn before having to move on to the next patient. Most of all, Rose writes about this being the moment that she realized she would either have to give up her humanity – walling off her heart to not feel loss when each future animal died – or finding something, someone, a friend, a community to ground her and help her heal. Because, after all, death is inevitable, but this ending inspires her to make the most of her every day, and to help other creatures live full, healthy lives.

She is admitted and prepares to move to Romania the next year.


	8. The Best Four Years

Warning: Indirect references to adult themes appear in this chapter.

JKR owns everything that you recognize.

* * *

March 2025 – June 2029

While Rose was applying for dragon keeping academy in Romania, Alice was shadowing Healers at St. Mungo's, applying for Healer training positions, and receiving offers from around the world. She decides to go to a program in New York City, because "it's a wonderful time in my life to be young and living the good life in a city abroad!" Meanwhile, Scorpius wrote about his experience building permanent shelters and establishing a source of potable water for a low-income, rural community in his application to a civil engineering program at Cambridge, and Albus received an athletic scholarship to play Quidditch for Glasgow.

Rose and Alice met up for lunch once a week at the beginning of their gap year, but as they each became more heavily invested in their respective workplaces, weekly lunches tapered off to dinner every other week, and then to brunch once a month. Rose thinks that if they didn't live in the same apartment complex, they might not even see each other that often, and she is thankful for this anchor to her friend. When they see each other, it is as if nothing has changed at all, and they can pick up from where they left off.

By the end of August, everybody has packed up their lives and drifted off to start a new chapter in their lives. They've each promised to stay in touch, but they somehow know that they'll meet new people and get caught up in their new lives. But there's still the promise of holidays to bring everyone back together to get caught up.

* * *

During orientation, Rose becomes fast friends with a classmate called Astrid Leong. Together they take on classes, endless memorization of anatomy and physiology of dragons and related creatures, disappointment over not being allowed to work hands-on with the dragons until their second year, and the insanity of dragon keepers-in-training blowing off steam at the end of each week. They discover that the upper years throw crazy parties most weekends, and it is here that Rose first encounters boys who are testing the waters of manhood.

She decides she likes it.

Two months into the term, after a big test in covering digestive anatomy and physiology of dragons, Rose and Astrid make a pact to get laid this upcoming weekend. Rose has had her eye on a second year called Ryan Lewandowski – he's a little quieter and less rowdy than most of the boys, but still extremely fun when the entire cohort turns up. And thanks to a variety of factors, but primarily Astrid's skills as a wing-woman, Rose ends up in bed with Ryan. It's her first time, and it's awkward and it hurts, but Ryan is careful and respectful and they part in the morning as friends.

During her first term away, Rose sees a couple messages each week from Scorpius – with the most recent being the hilarity of his roommate. Apparently Scorpius has never heard of the concept of being sexiled, so he stays put for the entire time that his roommate and the roommate's girlfriend were getting it on in the top bunk, which entertains Rose enormously. Other than this, she learns that he is taking a combination of muggle and magical courses, all foundational to future work that he wants to do. He generally likes his instructors, but is appalled when Rose says that often her teachers show up at the parties.

"It's a really small community, and most of the students get to be good friends with the faculty by the end of three or four years. It's not like the faculty get up to any of the debauchery of the students – they do still maintain their professionalism. But I feel that as friends, they are entitled to socialize," Rose protests, in their defense.

* * *

The first time that Rose comes home for Christmas hols, she spends several days in the company of only her family. While this was pleasant at first, having not seen them in a very long time, they begin to drive Rose completely barmy. Alice's message, then, comes at the perfect time.

A [1023]: Wanna go to a party tonight at the Scamanders'?

A [1024]: A bunch of our yearmates are gunna be there, we can see how much people have changed in the last couple years.

Having tired of the craziness of her family all together again, Rose agrees.

They meet up an hour beforehand, to get coffee and catch up with each other, and Rose is happy to learn that Alice is essentially the same person at heart, and they still click very well together. Healer training is challenging, Alice says, but she's loving every minute of it, and New York is just such a vivid place to be doing it. "You should come visit sometime! We'll go out see the sights, the Hudson River Valley is really gorgeous all the time, experience the nightlife, meet boooyyys and it will be a great time!"

At the party, the first person that Rose notices when she walks in with Alice is none other than Scorpius Malfoy. Alice does not fail to register the surprise that remains etched on Rose's face when they turn to look for the punch bowl and snacks provided by Aunt Luna.

"What's he doing here?" Rose hisses.

"Lorcan is dating his cousin. Persephone Nott? Their mothers are sisters, I think."

"Oh."

"Hey Rose, are you okay?"

"I'm sorry. I was just really surprised to see him here. It's still a shock to see him after, well, everything." Rose trails off and lets Alice recall the horrifyingly awkward situation in their sixth year and the whole situation with Kasper in their seventh year, while praying that this excuse is sufficient to cover up her real reason, which is much more related to their budding friendship which is developing over the phone. In fact, she's a little hurt that he didn't tell her that he would be coming to this party, considering that she knows all about his uni roommate's sex life and they've stayed up late jointly watching trashy muggle television shows.

She's not sure how to respond to being in the same room as him again, but fortunately does not have to figure this out, since at that moment, Lysander calls the room to order and introduces them to a muggle card game which has them all loudly accusing each other of being liars for the rest of the night.

It's not until everyone is getting ready to go, and Rose is waiting for Alice to wrap herself up in all her winter gear, that she has a chance to speak with Scorpius. They make eye contact while he's putting his boots on, and she goes over to him.

"Hey Scorpius."

He looks up from tying his laces and smiles when he sees who is calling him. "Hey Rose. Fancy seeing you here."

"Everyone is so different from what I've remembered but also weirdly still the same."

"Agreed. It was fun though!"

"Yes!" A pause. "Say, would you want to get a bunch of people to see a movie? In muggle London. Or something. They've got the newest installment of that movie where they go gallivanting around in space or whatever coming out next week."

"Sure, sounds like a good plan. And we can try to get dinner after?"

It's not a date because there are other people there, but it feels cozy and just right to spend time with Scorpius Malfoy.

* * *

Rose and Ryan sleep together a couple more times until Ryan decides he doesn't just want casual sex anymore, but a legitimate relationship. Rose turns him down, saying that she can't handle the commitment of a relationship on top of their stressful classes, and finds someone else to sleep with. In the meantime, though, Astrid has fallen in love with a classmate one year ahead called Charlie Wu, and Rose sees a happily ever after in their future.

Second year. Starting with the dragons in the field is as amazing as Rose always knew it would be. They tend to the intimidating and territorial males, females who are often even more fearsome than the males when they are in heat, infant and adolescent dragons in health and in illness. Rose takes elective courses to spend more time with the creatures in the surrounding forests, to broaden her horizons with comparative anatomy and physiology, but still her favorite experience in her three years in the field is the night that a very pregnant and very injured Chinese Windrider is brought into the facility. Everybody is roused from their sleep – or in Rose's case, pulled away from video chatting with Alice – to help. And when the first tendrils of dawn crept over the horizon, the eggs had been laid in a secure location and the condition of the mother was stabilized enough so that she could care for her eggs.

Every time Rose comes back from Romania, she finds time to meet up with Scorpius and the gang for movies or board games or water sports in the summer. Somehow Scorpius has been promoted to the position of her non-cousin best friend who she's still in touch with from their Hogwarts days, which amuses her to no end. She doesn't know when during her dragon training and Alice's Healer training the two girls stopped speaking so much, but she contents herself with their infrequent conversations and Scorpius' company in between. Besides, there's so much going on at the academy.

Rose spends two months each summer at school – the students have no summer courses and they are always welcome as extra hands in the field. But she also makes sure to go home for Hugo's graduation from Hogwarts, for family birthdays and family reunions. She goes to see Alice in New York a couple of times, exploring the city, sleeping with a boy with a funny accent, hiking in the Hudson River Valley, and one time even venturing as far north as Canada to see the Niagara Falls, experience poutine, and view some races in the World Cup of a muggle sport called dragon boat.

In Rose's fourth year at the academy, she is mostly finished with her coursework. In fact, Astrid had managed to squeeze her last several courses into a very busy third year, so that she could graduate with Charlie and together they moved back to Singapore, but this means that Rose's closest friend at school is gone. She continues to attend the occasional Friday night party, socialize with her classmates, and mentor the younger students, but she finds that the overall mentality among the fourth years is forward searching: looking for job prospects for the next year and a general itch to get out. She knows Scorpius feels this too; they spend almost every other Friday night in a video call, talking about what they want to do and searching for opportunities to apply for in between catching up on television shows and swapping dinner recipes. She speaks to Scorpius far more often than she speaks to Alice, who was superb during her Healer training and has started her residency at the sister hospital of St. Mungo's in France after three years. Rose therefore spends the majority of her daylight hours working in the field. She makes the acquaintance of more of the technicians and long-term staff, and finds herself spending time with them after hours. She's inexplicably drawn to a gruff and grumpy Matei, who is six years her elder, but after seeing his fun side, they start sleeping together. And even though Rose objected to starting a relationship with Ryan citing the craziness of school, and despite the clear expiration date for Matei (he's continuing as a technician when she graduates and leaves for her job in Arizona), she finds that with her additional free time in this fourth year, she has fallen into something akin to a relationship with Matei.

* * *

TL;DR: College was a blur.

A/N: Avalon, anyone? :D The space movie is the new Star Wars sequel trilogy.


	9. Scenes from the Desert

After two decades of reading novels, I finally noticed the inscription in the front which reads, "This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or otherwise, is purely coincidental." And now that I think about it, this is common in film, too. I wonder why it's necessary to deny so vehemently that fiction is heavily influenced by the reality of the authors? Perhaps entirely for legal reasons, so they can't be accused of slander and such?

Do I really have to write the same disclaimer at the beginning of every chapter?

* * *

June - August 2029

While Rose is cruising through her last term at school, messing around with Matei, and waiting for her new life to start, Scorpius is finishing his degree in magical and civil engineering with an emphasis on water management. He lines up a low-paying job in Egypt at a consulting company which evaluates current water use practices and provides advice to communities about the responsible use of the Nile's abundant, but finite resources. so that future generations might also reap the benefits of the river. He tells Rose that his father scoffed at his choice of gainful employment, as it is apparently not consistent with the Malfoy model of making oodles of money and keeping a high profile.

"But I see it as gaining valuable experience with coordinating the needs of low-income communities with external developers who think they know what's best in terms of housing and water supply. I think, if I rise through the ranks at companies like this, I'll learn enough to start my own company and be able to direct my own projects and make a name for myself that way. After all, I am still only 22 and quite green and there's just so much that I still don't know."

"I think it's admirable," Rose tells him.

Rose, meanwhile, wants to have a last epic adventure before being tied down. After talking with Scorpius, she decides what better place to have an adventure than her new home: she'll take a month long road trip around the American Southwest to see some sights and shake off a bit of her exploring itch. She doesn't feel comfortable going on her own, though, and asks Scorpius to accompany her, which he cheerfully and instantaneously says yes to. She doesn't read into how easily he agrees to travel abroad with her. Together, they spend several late nights on the phone with very little conversation outside of suggesting a stop or activity. By the end they are happy with the desert parks they will visit, hoping that they will be relatively deserted since the parks are treacherous in the summer to those who have no means of managing the outside heat.

"As an added bonus, it's also a very arid region which gets most of its life-sustaining water from a central source which is in high demand and poor management, so that could be like a sneak peek for my new job," Scorpius quips, only half in jest.

"Nerd," Rose accuses.

"Pot. Kettle. Black."

They laugh, a mixed sound which has always been harmonious and comforting to Rose.

"But in all seriousness, this is supposed to be a vacation. Kicking back before we start in the soul-sucking machine of work."

"You don't believe that. I know that you've chosen your career path because it's what's given you the most joy through the years and you think you can make a huge positive contribution in a few lives. If that's what you consider soul-sucking, then I would call you a very confused lady."

Rose pauses a second, taking in this very insightful comment about her hopes and dreams. She hadn't realized that he was paying so much attention to the things she said. But only for a beat, before she fires back, "Oh, you're just a giant hopeless romantic."

"Loud and proud, babe."

Rose could get used to getting called pet names by Scorpius.

* * *

Graduation.

A subset of Rose's extended family comes to town for the ceremony, and Astrid and Charlie also return to see their friends off. Not wanting to introduce Matei to her family, Rose breaks it off with him two nights before she graduates. Although they both know this is coming, Rose starts tearing up before she makes it to the end of what she wants to say, and Matei starts crying too, and it all degenerates into a soggy makeout session and rough, needy goodbye sex in a storage shed in an unused dragon pen.

At the end, when they slump against the wall of the shed together, spent, Matei asks her, "Friends?"

Rose is silent for a long time before rolling off of him, and nodding her consent.

* * *

"WhOo are you going with?" Ron demands as soon as Rose informs him of her travel plans.

Rose steels herself for this grand reveal. She reminds herself that she's legally an adult and free to do what she wants with her life, including choosing who she trusts and spends time with, before she sucks in a breath and says, "Scorpius."

"MaLFOY?"

"No, Dad. Scorpius Xie, from school." At her father's blank look, she says, tiredly, "Yes, of course, Dad, it's Scorpius Malfoy. How many parents are crazy enough to make their children that?"

Her father's jaw is working although no sound is coming out and his face is approaching a rather alarming shade of puce. Before something can combust, Rose appeals to her mother's sensibilities.

"He's fine, really, and we're friends. He's not his father and he's never done anything untoward to me, not even a prank at Hogwarts. We just got to talking about this and we're both excited about the trip. It's not like we're getting married or anything." She doesn't feel the need to tell them just how long they've been friends, or what it took for them to become friends.

Her parents exchange a meaningful glance, after which her mother says, "We trust you, Rose, and if you trust him, that's good enough for us. But two young people abroad and away from civilization, what if something happened to one of you? We would feel so much more comfortable if you brought another person to watch out for each other's backs."

"Preferably someone we know. Like a cousin."

"Yes, thank you, Ronald."

* * *

Before Rose brings this up to Scorpius, she considers who she would bring. Alice is a no-go; when they spoke recently, Alice complained that she was starting at her job so much sooner than any of her friends and she feels that she's made a horrible mistake, not taking more time off. But she needs the income, and she doesn't have any time off for the first four months, when she will also need to be ready to return to the hospital at a moment's notice.

Rose also isn't keen on inviting Astrid, who she was delighted to see again at her graduation. Astrid would likely want to bring Charlie, and Rose just wants a quiet vacation with her friends and not feel like she is third wheeling. Besides, Charlie dropped hints to her that he would be proposing in the near future, and while this is phenomenal and exciting, this may throw Astrid into the insanity of wedding planning. So, no Astrid.

This leaves Albus. He may actually be the best bet, since Scorpius also knows him from school and the two got on well enough. Albus has signed on as a reserve Chaser with the Tutshill Tornadoes, but since the regular season is over, Albus has a bit of time to futz around before needing to report back for off-season training in October.

When Rose brings up the idea of bringing Albus with Scorpius, he hesitates only a split second before agreeing, it's so fast that Rose thinks it may be entirely in her imagination.

Albus is on board, too. "Sounds brilliant," is his input when Rose catches him up on their plans. "I'm down for whatever, so I defer to you."

* * *

The trio takes a long-distance Portkey to the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, and arrive in a hidden section for International Portkeys. Customs officials scan their heap of backpacking gear, and finding nothing out of the ordinary, release Rose and friends into the dry desert heat. Rose is already sweating buckets by the time they find their way to the one magical rental car company and pick up their vehicle.

Rose collapses into the backseat and speaks a climate control spell as soon as she can, and breathes more easily when it starts to kick in. She Summons her ratty old sweatpants and pulls them over her shorts, and settles in to take a nap on the magically expanded backseat while Albus drives the first leg.

"Where to, captain?" Albus asks her.

"Scorpius knows just as well as I do where we're going."

"You got it, captain," Scorpius grins cheekily at her. "You've got all the jams on your phone, though."

She passes her phone over. "There's no password on it."

After a moment, Scorpius asks her, in a somewhat strained voice, "Who's Matei?"

"Oh. Ugh," Rose sighs. "Morgana and Circe. What has he written this time? Actually, don't tell me. I'm still tired out from that trip."

"So, I take it that I shouldn't send a sarcastic response back?"

Rose sits bolt upright. "I will throw you out of this moving car if you do."

"Bloody hell, woman. I was just kidding," Scorpius exclaims, at the same time that Rose makes eye contact with Albus in the rearview mirror and he says, "You gonna tell us who he is?"

Rose lies back down. "Later."

Albus drives in silence for several minutes while Scorpius fiddles with Rose's phone to get it connected to the audio system. The upbeat opening notes of "99 Red Balloons" begin piping through the speakers, in stark contrast with the strange tension that has settled in the car.

Rose genuinely would like to take a nap, as she usually feels like crap after a long-distance Portkey, but Matei is insistent about being noticed, and sends a message every couple of minutes, which in turn interrupts the music and jars Rose just as she's settling down. Multiple times.

"Bloody fucking idiot," Rose growls as she sits up. "Can I have my phone back, please?"

Scorpius hands it back without meeting her eyes.

"Thanks."

Rose at first wants to turn off receiving messages altogether, but remembers that her parents asked her to send them a message when she arrived. So she does that, saying that they've arrived safely and Albus is driving, then fiddles with the settings until she is able to specifically silence the chat with Matei.

Rose hands her phone back to Scorpius, and goes to lie back down, but Albus prompts her, "So, Rose, we're stuck in this box with wheels together for the next month and gonna be learning all sorts of intimate details about each other. I nominate you to start us off on this journey of oversharing by telling us who the fuck Matei thinks he is to be sending you texts like that, and why this is the first time that any of us have heard of him."

She sighs. They're off to a pretty rocky start to this road trip, and Rose figures that it's not going to get any better until she tells them about Matei. She takes a moment to curse her own stupidity for getting into this mess in the first place, then starts with the basics.

"He was a technician at the academy. No, not was. Is. He's six years older than me, and we started sleeping together during my last term when I was finishing up with a couple easy courses and spending extra time in the field."

"It surprises me that you would just sleep around with some bloke," Scorpius manages to say. Rose can't tell if he's making a snide remark or if he's trying to understand better, and decides to ignore it after her initial prickle of annoyance.

"Would you shut it, mate, and let Rose continue," Albus chips in, rather unhelpfully.

"No, it's fine, Albus. Ask whatever you want, I'm probably leaving out some important details. And yeah, Scorpius, I guess you're right. We were exclusive, so I guess he was my," Rose fumbles for words. "My boyfriend with an expiration date. We broke up before graduation because I didn't care for him to meet everyone, since, well, he had reached said expiration date."

Scorpius barks a laugh, but Albus asks, "So if you're broken up, how come he's still sending you racy messages?"

"Because he wanted to stay friends."

A pregnant pause, which Scorpius breaks, by sniping, "You know that only psychopaths try to stay friends with their exes."

Rose feels this is somewhat unreasonable coming from him, seeing as they are exes of a sort, and definitely friends, but also feels that now is not a great time to alert Albus to this six-years-dead relationship. So she settles for meeting his eyes, and giving Scorpius (what she thinks is) her best stink eye.

"Yes, well, I know that _now_. I hardly had all my bearings when he still had his prick inside of me after the make-up sex that we had halfway into my breaking up with him."

"TOO MUCH INFORMATION, ROSE," Albus roars from the driver's seat, causing the car to swerve into the lane on the left and the car in that lane to lay on their horn.

"You asked for oversharing, and I'm delivering, am I not?"

Albus only grunts in response, and they spend the next several minutes listening to some boy band singing about one thing.

"This still doesn't really explain…" Albus tries again.

"Merlin, you're so pushy." Rose meets Albus' eyes in the rearview mirror and sticks her tongue out at him.

"My best guess is that he's trying to relive his early twenties vicariously through me. He made some poor decisions in school, when he was my age, and is now still living with his parents and working at a job that he doesn't find fulfilling. I think that being with me really hit home the reality that students are doing what he's doing as a stepping stone to something bigger, and that his life is passing him by. So he wants out of his current situation. But he's too cautious to give up his decent wages and go back into debt to get the training that he needs for the job that he wants. Actually, I don't 'think' this, I _know_ it. Considering the number of times that we've had this conversation." Rose wrinkles her nose at the memory.

Albus and Scorpius make tutting sounds as Rose continues, floodgates opened.

"Twenty-eight is hardly old. It's not like he has no time to learn something new. But he thinks he's an old dog and can't learn new tricks. It's like he just wants to skip straight to retirement and not have to work for it, when in reality, he's only trapped by his own mind. It's so frustrating!"

Albus, tentatively: "Why don't you just cut him off?"

"I've thought about it, trust me, but I don't know, there's something wrong with me, or something. Something about him being my first relationship of any substance, no matter how temporary it was supposed to be. I do care for him and want the best for him. I just wish he'd stop being a baby sometimes and see that's he's capable and he can be more."

"Sounds pretty unhealthy for everyone," Scorpius supplies unhelpfully.

"No shit, Sherlock," Rose snaps, eyes blazing.

"Hey, guys, we have to play nice together for a month still." This conciliatory tone from Albus is a surprise to both Rose and Scorpius and they look anywhere but each other, embarrassed.

"Sorry," Rose offers.

"Apology accepted. And I'm sorry too."

"What are you going to do next, Rose?" Albus asks after the next song, "Brand New," starts.

"He's been talking about looking for new jobs. Which is a minor improvement, but it's still just talk. He's talking about looking in Arizona, which makes me uncomfortable. I didn't want anything long-term from him, and I certainly think it's aggressively irresponsible to move from Romania to Arizona on a whim. I want my freedom and if he did get a job near me, I'd feel stifled and potentially somewhat threatened."

"Does he know this?"

"No."

"Rose," Scorpius interrupts, turning around in his seat. They make eye contact. "I think you need to break it off with him. Properly."

She pouts. "I can't just, not respond to his messages and hope he gets the message?"

"He might be dumber than you're giving him credit for, and he's clearly more persistent than you expected him to be."

"Scorpius! That's unnecessarily cruel."

"Sorry." He doesn't look sorry at all. "Doesn't make it less true."

Rose sighs wearily. "All right. I knew it was coming to this, I guess I just," she stops, defeated. Scorpius looks genuinely contrite now.

They drive without speaking for some time, Rose mulling over what they've just talked about. Today may be the first time that she put into words the feeling that, despite that he is older than her, she is the more mature of the two and feels vaguely like she's become a sort of mother-figure, which is equal parts disturbing and irresponsible of him to ask of her. It definitely cannot go on, and as much as Rose hates the idea of breaking up with someone not in person, they're not going to see each other again, and this idea of ghosting on him won't stop him from spamming her in the present and drawing her attention away from this trip which is supposed to be fun and relaxing. There's really only one course of action, and before she can talk herself out of it, Rose casts an isolation spell and dials Matei.

"Rose! Hi!" Matei greets cheerfully. "This was unexpected, how are you doing? I trust you had safe travels?"

"Matei," Rose starts, her voice flat. "We can't do this anymore."

"What? I don't understand."

"We broke up—"

"But you said that you still wanted to be friends!"

"I've changed my mind."

"You can't, just," he splutters.

"It's really too bad, I did. Please don't try to contact me anymore, and definitely please don't look for jobs near me. I wish you the best possible life." Rose really needs this conversation to en before she starts choking up like last time.

"Rose," he's pleading with her now.

"You know who my family are, heroes of the Second Wizarding War? Remember them? They're very responsive when I feel threatened, and pretty influential, too." Rose hadn't meant to bring her family connections into this, but it had just slipped out.

"You know what?" Matei's tone is harder now. "Fine. I don't need you in my life either, you crazy bint. But now I know what it's like to fuck the daughter of war heroes, and let me tell you, you're not that good, and I thought your jokes during sex were dumb since the beginning."

Tears are streaming freely down Rose's face now, as she stares into her phone, hearing only dial tone. She gives up trying to swipe at her running eyes and nose, and lowers the isolation spell, to find that Albus has pulled over, but his hands are still clenched on the steering wheel, knuckles white and lips pulled into an angry line. Scorpius, on the other hand, has moved to the backseat with Rose, and the moment she emerges, he gathers her into his arms, with a soft, "Oh, Rose."

She sobs into his chest for some minutes until she collects her bearings enough to sniffle, "Wait, how did you…"

Scorpius waves his hand around. "Your phone was still connected to the car audio system."

This brings on a fresh wave of wails. "I'm so dumb!"

"No, no, Rose, you're not, shh, you're gonna be okay."

Her face is buried in his shoulder and he's murmuring little comforts in her ear and stroking her hair when he meets Albus' eyes.

Albus raises an eyebrow.

Scorpius purses his lips.

Albus glares sternly.

Scorpius rolls his eyes.

"We're gonna talk about this later," Albus mouths, and Scorpius sighs.

A little later, Rose has stopped crying enough to catch snippets of Albus muttering to himself. Something about, "temporary disfigurement," and, "hex his bollocks off," sends Rose into giggles, which makes Albus glance back at the pair.

Rose is straightening her hair, and taking a last swipe at her eyes before banishing her heap of used tissues, and pointedly not looking at Scorpius, who is casting a cleaning charm on his shirt.

"Let's go to Zion," Rose declares.

"Well, about that," Albus says, and opens his door.

Rose gasps and scrambles to get out of the car also, to take in the stunning view of the desert.

Scorpius grabs her wrist before she opens the door on the desert heat, and cast cooling and sunscreen charms over her before letting her go again, causing Rose to laugh, and call out over her shoulder, "Thanks, mum!"

Scorpius scowls after her, and Albus playfully hits his shoulder and states what's on Scorpius' mind: "You'd hope that she sees you as more than a mum after that display in there."

It's high afternoon, and after Scorpius and Albus throw on their own protective spells and step out of the car, they see heat shimmering off of all their surroundings. The landscape is dry and barren and sparsely occupied with plant life, but in the two-minute head start that Rose got, she's somehow already managed to make friends with a tiny dragon who has made her home at the base of a cactus.

"She's a miniature flying gecko," she tells the boys fondly as the little dragon scampers between her fingers.

The little dragon, sensing the boys' presence, freezes, does a couple push-ups, and when that doesn't frighten the intruders off, she opens her wings and flies off.

Rose stands and brushes her hands off. "Say, Albus, do you ever do push-ups to scare off bullies?"

"No, but that was wicked!"

"Stay with me, coz, and you'll see so much more," Rose laughs.

* * *

They reach the campground soon after, and find that it's surprisingly crowded despite the heat. They feel lucky to find a camp site, and spend some time setting up their tent. It was a gift to Rose from her father, and is more modern and rather smaller than Rose's grandfather's tent, but large enough that Rose can have her own bedroom separate from the boys. There's also a kitchen and a common area, but they'll have to use the public bathroom facilities and tap.

They decide to have an early dinner and play some card games before going stargazing later in the evening.

Unfortunately Rose doesn't make it to the board games – she falls asleep on the floor of the common space immediately after dinner. When Albus goes to jostle her awake, she mumbles something about, "Wake me up… stars…" so he decides to leave her alone for now. Scorpius has already fetched blanket and pillow from the linens closet, and tucks them around Rose.

"Let's talk," Albus says to Scorpius, in a tone that suggests that he doesn't have a choice in the matter.

"Alright," Scorpius agrees.

The two boys wander into one of the sleeping rooms, where they sit with their backs against the bedframe of the bunk bed.

"So," Albus begins ominously. "You're in love with Rose."

An equivalent thought had been developing in Scorpius' mind for quite some months, but it hadn't quite reached the crystal clarity carried in Albus' accusation.

"Hang on, why do you say that like it's a bad thing?"

"So you're not denying it!"

"Well, no, she's one of my best friends, but wouldn't you say that you love your best friends?"

"That's a different kind of love. There are things that you'd be willing to do for Rose that you wouldn't do for your other friends. Say, for example, comfort them while they're crying. _Stroke their hair_ while you're comforting them."

Had Scorpius not stopped listening halfway through Albus' second sentence, eyes glazed over and pupils dilated, he perhaps would have been more active about voicing his opposition to the first – he'd definitely comforted others of his friends when they chose to come crying to him. But alas, he was jostled out of his daydream when Albus slapped him across his face.

"Oi! Quit having dirty thoughts about my cousin!"

Suitably chastised, Scorpius mumbles, "Sorry."

"And besides," Albus continues in a reasonable tone, "you wouldn't want to be her rebound from that piece of filth…"

The two boys share a moment of silence, plotting a variety of horrible things they wanted to do to Matei after his little show on the phone earlier. But Scorpius breaks their pleasant reverie by saying, "Rose wouldn't want us to."

"You're right, but it doesn't mean that he couldn't handle a little scare… Hang on. We were talking about you and how you're keen on my cousin."

Scorpius sighs. "Remind me why you have to do this, again?"

"Because when I was born into the Potter-Weasley clan, I by default signed an oath in blood to threaten to carve off your reproductive organs with a rusty spoon and have your house elf serve them to your parents while you're off dying somewhere of blood loss and tetanus if you (1), lay a finger on Rose, or (2), hurt her."

"Look, I'm not planning to, okay, you already pointed out the obvious that it would be a dumb move to be her rebound, and besides, it's not like long-distance relationships work and there's the matter of how she doesn't look at me in that way at all. We're _just_ friends, I swear."

At that moment, Rose pokes her head in through the tent flap which divides their room from the common area. She's groggy and her hair is tousled and Scorpius has never seen anyone more beautiful than Rose in that moment.

As she wipes sleep from her eyes, she manages, "Who's just friends? And is it dark enough to go see stars yet?"

Albus cuts Scorpius a look that says, "We're not done here," which Scorpius ignores in favor of getting up to join Rose.

They light their wands, which to the muggles look like they are holding flashlights or wearing headlamps, and trek up a ridge near their campsite to lay out, gazing at the Milky Way and wishing on the occasional shooting star. They've brought a couple blankets, and Scorpius longs to be together with Rose under one, but at Albus' silent insistence, he concedes to let Albus sit between them as they huddle for warmth under the stars.

Upon returning to their tent, Rose requests in a very small voice to not sleep alone tonight. Wordlessly, Scorpius conjures another cot for "their" room and the group never speaks of the reason that Rose is unhappy sleeping alone with her own thoughts.

* * *

The next day, they go hiking along a riverbed. Albus walks in front, enjoying scrambling over rocks and the burn in his legs when the trail slopes upwards. However, after twenty minutes of dead silence from Rose and Scorpius halfway into the hike, he turns around and realizes that they're not behind him. Panicking and irrationally worried that Scorpius chose this inopportune moment to make a move on Rose, Albus retraces his steps on the trail at a jog until, ten minutes later, he sees them. Scorpius is standing on a little ledge two meters above the trail, and is running his hands reverently over the stone and for some reason he is talking about _water_ and how the shape of the canyon reveals the history of water movement. Rose seems to be only half listening, she's taken her shoes off and has dipped her feet into the water, and is giggling when fishes come to nibble at her toes, and has a little aquatic snake curled around her ankle.

Albus sighs.

"Hey, guys. I thought we were going on this hike?"

Rose looks up at him, mirth still etched across her features. "Sorry, Albus! We just got so caught up with this patch of river, but as soon as I convince Miss Venomous Stryker that she can resume hunting for herself and not just eat the fish that are nibbling my toes, I'll be ready."

Albus shudders and turns around to look just as Scorpius lets himself down from the ledge and dusts off his hands. "The water history of this region is remarkable," he declares to no one in particular, and is not very put off when no one responds to him.

This was not something Albus bargained for when he agreed to go road tripping with Rose. He hadn't realized just how big of _nerds_ these two were, but it seems they'll need to allot more time for these two to get distracted on their hikes.

* * *

Later that night, they're perched on the ledge again with the stars, when Rose says, "So, Albus, you all know about my failed love life, but what's up with yours? Are you still with that girl you met in school? Her name is… Vivian Lao?"

A goofy smile crosses Albus' features and he says, "Yeah, things are good with Viv. She's still got a year in school left, and job opportunities for her major are scarce near Tutshill, so I've been thinking that I need to make a good impression on my coaches and admin staff so I can get a good recommendation for if I need to transfer to somewhere closer to her."

Rose and Scorpius exchange a glance.

Rose tries gently, "But you'll have only been with the Tornadoes one year. Isn't that, well, you know, not quite long enough to secure a really solid recommendation or good impression?"

Albus sighs. "Yeah. I've been thinking about all the counter-arguments. I wish I had a little longer, even one more year would be good, for this to be a really good line item on my resume."

"Also, mate, if you were to live together after she graduates, couldn't she just, you know, use magical means to commute? Things like, Floo?"

Rose hears the subtext of the clause, "if you were to live together," and knows that he's on the same page as her about maybe not starting off by living together right out of college, especially if she's keen on living in a city center to be close to the nightlife.

"Thanks, guys," Albus grumbles. "I was just trying to tell you about how much I love Viv, and you've turned it into an interrogation."

"Sorry, sorry!" Rose concedes. "We just are so excited to see you playing professional Quidditch, and you know, we're still so young and settling down can happen later."

"Yeah, mate, we would hate for you to throw away your chance at the big times just to stay in and be a homebody."

A long pause from Albus, then, "It's just that, out of all the girls I've met, Viv is the only one who really _gets_ me, you know? And she doesn't like me because I'm an athlete, or the progeny of war heroes. And I don't want to throw that away."

Rose leans her head on Albus' shoulder. "I'm sorry for being harsh on you, Albus. It's clear that you love Viv a lot, and I would hope that maybe she loves you enough in return to make some sacrifices also for your career and happiness."

Albus leans into Rose. "Thanks, Rose, it means a lot to me that you care."

Rose jokes, "Ah, you know, it's because we're related. If that wasn't the case, well, I'd be outta here. _Feelings_ make me squirm. You do your own life and all that jazz."

"THANKS ROSE WE WERE HAVING A MOMENT AND NOW YOU'VE RUINED IT."

"SORRY ALBUS HOW CAN I REPAIR THIS? I CAN HELP YOU PLAN WHAT COLOR THE TABLECLOTHS WILL BE AT YOUR WEDDING OR SOMETHING."

"What! We aren't getting married yet!"

Scorpius cuts in at this moment, "Will you two shut up and enjoy the pretty lights out there."

Rose turns to Scorpius. "Oh all right mister. We're sorry for neglecting you in our conversation about relationships. Do entertain us with tales of your love life!"

Scorpius scowls (which Rose cannot see from the other side of Albus) and his shoulders hunch forward by a shade (which Rose can see, and makes her feel a small amount of guilt).

"You know I haven't got one, Rose."

"But it's hardly because you're unattractive or not meeting new people." Rose snorts inwardly. _Not unattractive_. Understatement of the century.

"Well, yeah. We'll see what happens when I move."

"It's a little farming town, right?"

"Yes, and the dating opportunities will be plentiful."

"Circe, Scorpius, you could afford to be a little more optimistic than this."

"Sorry that I'm just realistic."

"You boys are both downers. I'll not ask you about your relationships again."

This is obviously untrue as relationships continue to be a favorite conversation topic in the next several weeks, as the three friends hike, meet small dragons and the occasional large one, learn desert hydrology, and visit Bryce Canyon, Arches, and Grand Canyon National Parks.

* * *

At the end of the month, they return to Vegas, and they have one night before Albus and Scorpius are scheduled to return home and Rose takes a short trip by Floo directly to her new apartment. They've previously agreed to have one party night, and at Rose's insistence ("I demand a room with a shower"), they've booked a room at the Wynn, where they spend some time washing up and resting up before they wander out in search of dinner somewhere on the Strip. Having eaten their fill of fast food on the road between parks, they decide to spring for some nice sushi.

They're back out on the strip in time to see sunset colors over the Bellagio fountains, and return to their room to dress up and pregame.

Forty-seven minutes later finds Rose in a deep red curve-hugging crop top, tight skinny jeans, strappy silver sandals, and a touch of eye and lip makeup. She's left her hair down; it's liberating after a month of ponytails. She does a spin for Albus and Scorpius; Albus is wearing a sky-blue, short-sleeved button down embroidered with glittery tiny golden Snitches and has also thrown on some clean khakis, while Scorpius has rolled the sleeves of his forest green button down to his elbows and is also wearing silvery slacks.

"You're so Slytherin that it hurts my eyes," Rose opts to poke fun at Scorpius instead of complimenting him, because she's unsure that she'd be able to contain the accompanying wolf-whistle.

"Thanks," Scorpius responds, mentally telling himself not to drool. "You don't look so bad yourself."

They hold eye contact for a long moment and likely would have lost track of time had it not been for Albus loudly placing the bottle of Grey Goose on the table, startling Rose and Scorpius to look at him. He's already poured three shots and declaring, "I propose a toast. To a truly excellent adventure and not killing each other in the process."

"That's dark, Albus," Rose says with a concerned look at Albus, as if the heat has gotten to his head.

"You gotta admit, though, Rose, he's kinda right. It got close a couple of times," Scorpius muses.

"Remember that time that we had to get on the road super early and Rose was driving and threatened to tie us up if we didn't play her freaking country music?"

"Or the time when Rose thought you hadn't showered so she cast that Freshening Charm on you and accidentally attracted that giant pterasaur?" Scorpius adds, struggling to hold back a laugh.

"Okay, okay, we get it, can we get back to doing shots?"

Albus smiles at Rose, eyes twinkling. "Thanks so much for inviting me along with you, I doubt my last month would have been as eye-opening if I'd been at home."

"Cheers, to Rose, and our last grand adventure," Scorpius lifts his glass.

Rose smiles and shakes her head, and drinks, not breaking eye contact with Scorpius, because they'd previously discussed the completely stupid superstition that if you don't keep eye contact with the person you're toasting, it's bad luck and seven years of bad sex.

Eventually they make it downstairs to the club, where they skirt the shallow pool and beeline for the dance floor.

They go to acquire drinks before pushing into the mass of sweaty, dancing bodies, and when Rose tries to pay for hers, the bartender waves her cash away, saying, "Compliments of that gentleman," and gesturing to a tall, tan dude, who winks.

Scorpius glowers, and Rose laughs, leaning into him. She asks the bartender, "Can you put my friends' drinks on his tab too?"

The bartender shrugs, and Rose decides that she doesn't care what the bro thinks, so she takes her drink and Scorpius' hand and pulls him toward the dance floor.

Speech and hearing are impossible even on the fringes of the dance floor, and Rose has to release Scorpius' hand for a moment to charm all of their glasses to not splash when jostled. Considering all of their states of inebriation, it's surprising that it mostly works. Lacing her fingers with Scorpius' and nodding for Albus to follow, Rose plunges into the dance floor.

Finding a small clearing near the DJ large enough for the three of them to have a weak approximation of dancing, Albus has to forcefully remove a greasy-looking man wearing a fedora and a lei from grinding against Rose. Rose, in turn, rolls her eyes and fishes out her phone and messages the group.

R [2334]: Merlin's saggy left bollock, it's fine, it's just part of the experience.

Matching scowls appear on Albus and Scorpius' faces.

S [2335]: Charm us to be forgettable.

A [2335]: Not sober enough to be confident that I wouldn't mess up.

R [2336]: Would you just shut up and dance!

Albus and Scorpius lock eyes, and if Rose wasn't lost to the beat and the drink, she would have noticed that they seemed to be having a conversation.

Scorpius' eyes flick down to Rose and he wraps his arms around her dancing form, and she responds by draping herself over him and gyrating her hips. Albus frowns, but gives a little jerk of his head, seeming to concede that making Rose appear taken would be an effective strategy.

Scorpius sees in a private message:

A [2342]: And besides, who am I to deny your dream.

Rose, meanwhile, thinks she has figured out Scorpius' game, but since it's in line with what she wants, she doesn't say anything and enjoys the feeling of dancing with her best friend.

* * *

The next morning, Rose cracks an eye open, then immediately regrets it. Even the dim light from the bathroom shining into the room is too much for her throbbing head.

"Hangover remedy!" she mumbles into her pillow, and throws out her hand. Miraculously, she feels a glass press into her hand, which she sees contains liquid of the appropriate color, so she props herself up and downs it.

Fifteen seconds later, she sits up and declares, "I love magic."

The mood is somber as they wash up and pack up and grab a quick lunch at New York, New York before returning to the airport. Everything has already been said, and Rose wraps first Albus, then Scorpius in tight hugs, perhaps lingering a little too long on the second to cover her damp eyes.

"Best of luck, Rose," Albus says.

"Thanks, Albus. See you at Christmas."

Albus heads into customs first, after first giving Scorpius a pointed glare.

Rose laughs. "What was that?"

"Nothing, nothing," Scorpius mumbles.

Silence.

"Thanks-" they both start at the same time, then laugh.

"Thanks for joining me on my adventure, Scorpius. It wouldn't have been the same without you."

"Thanks for inviting me in the first place! And, I don't think it will be our last great adventure."

They've somehow ended up loosely holding hands, and Scorpius gives their linked hands a squeeze. "Stay in touch, Rose."

"Yeah, you too."

Another pause before Scorpius wraps her in another tight hug, then turns on his heel to walk to customs without another word.

* * *

A/Ns:

1\. "Only psychopaths try to stay friends with their exes." I read it on the internet, so it must be true.

2\. If anyone's curious, the card game they're playing while glamping is Hanabi.


	10. Dancing in the Strobe Lights

My apologies for the long delay between updates. I lost sight of my muse for a while, but now we're back, and it's the holidays, so without further ado, here's some vignettes for you.

Standard disclaimer.

* * *

August 2029 - ?

Some isolated conversations between Rose and Scorpius during their respective jobs:

* * *

(1)

Rose collapses into her bed after a night out dancing with her new colleagues, and realizes that she hasn't spoken to Scorpius in a long time. It's 2 a.m. her time, between the residual buzz and the ringing in her ears, she can't quite figure out what time it is on his end. But he's a responsible young man and probably has good sleeping habits. So maybe he's already awake and ready to face the Sunday.

She dials him.

He picks up on the third ring.

"Rose?" His voice is thick with sleep. And rather than apologize for waking him up, Drunk Rose takes a second to imagine what it would be like to wake up to his gravelly voice.

When she doesn't respond, Scorpius tries again. "Rose? Is everything okay?"

"Scorpius! Haaayyy!" There was something else she wanted to say, but it has slipped her mind in the last 30 seconds.

"Rose, you're drunk, aren't you?"

"Maaayyybeee… What's it to you?"

"Rose, you should drink water and go to sleep."

"But I want to talk to you. We haven't spoken in forever and ever," Rose huffs in indignation. "Please tell me how you are?" That sentence made sense in her head but once it leaves her mouth, she isn't so sure anymore.

A laugh from Scorpius' side. "I'm fine, Rose. I was looking forward to sleeping in this morning-"

Ah, there it is. The thing that Rose forgot to say earlier.

"SORRY FOR WAKING YOU UP!"

"Yikes, Rose, it's okay, you're forgiven, no need to shout. It's really good to hear from you too. Hey, how about this. You give me a call after you wake up; I have nothing specific planned for today and should be able to chat with you whenever."

"Okay," Rose manages through a yawn.

"Sleep well," Scorpius says, and Rose can hear the smile in his voice.

"Have… a good morning," Rose yawns again, and pulls the phone away from her face.

"It's always a good morning when it starts with you," Scorpius says to the dial tone.

* * *

(2)

Rose is home for Christmas, and she and Scorpius are having tea before the old gang gets together for dinner and games night. They've been chatting about their social lives in their respective new homes, and Scorpius has just made the mistake of asking Rose about her boyfriend:

"How's… Jandro?"

A long pause.

Not a great sign.

Rose sighs and slouches lower in her chair.

"I spend a lot of time thinking about breaking up with him."

"Aren't you still supposed to be in your honeymoon period?"

"Supposed to, yes."

"Then… what…"

Rose sighs. "You don't have to ask if you don't care to know. There's a lot of thoughts bumping around in my head and it's all kind of a mess right now."

"No, no, I'm happy to listen, anytime, it's whatever you want to tell me."

"Oh, boy." Rose takes a breath and tries to distill her thoughts in chronological order, and in a way that will still permit them to make it to dinner.

Scorpius nods along to Rose's story and asks the occasional clarifying question, but Rose gets through the entirety of it. Nothing has crystallized in the meantime, like she hoped it would.

"I, just, I don't know. I started dating him because we had good chemistry and we had fun adventures, but that's mostly taken backseat since he brought his crazy ex into the picture, about two weeks into seeing him. Which was two months ago. And I don't know why I stay with him, she's clearly his first priority. Am I delusional to hang on to this thing, hoping that we can go back to how it was in the beginning, when it was fun?"

Even before she finishes her sentence, she knows the answer is yes.

Instead of meeting Scorpius' eyes, she glances at her tea, which has (predictably) gone distressingly cold. Despite this being a Muggle establishment, she reheats it using a new dragon fire spell that she has been developing at work.

Scorpius, watches her do this, and after a moment, responds to her question by posing a question in return.

"Clearly you see something in his interaction with his ex that makes you want to stay."

"Yes, I guess you're right. He's fiercely loyal to people he cares about – which is another thing that freaked me out a little bit, he told me that he loved me about three days into us dating, which is just like, what. How do you just trust and love so quickly! But yeah. He's loyal, he's passionate, and he's really intelligent and he challenges me to be a better citizen. But his priorities are completely backwards, and I hate it."

"So what I'm hearing is that you value those qualities in a partner, and you're waiting for him to shift his priority from his ex to you."

"Yes, I guess so."

"Rose." Scorpius drags his eyes up from his tea, and reaches out to lightly touch Rose's chin, and she starts and meets his eyes. "Rose, you deserve better than to be waiting for someone who doesn't actually seem that cool to realize that you're great. And besides, there are definitely other guys who have those same traits." Like me, he wants to add.

Rose gives a weak chuckle into her tea. Now there's the crystal clarity that she was hoping for by telling her story.

"Thanks for saying that, Scorpius. I think I was too deep into this mess to see the bigger picture, and I'm really glad for your eyes and your advice on this whole thing. You're right, of course, you always are, but, ugh, I got attached, and I hate having to extricate myself from these things... It sucks so much."

* * *

(3)

"I don't handle being single very well."

"How's that?"

"There's just all sorts of aspects of a relationship that I crave when I'm not in one."

"Do you care to elaborate? I haven't got any firsthand experience."

"Well, there's the obvious ones, physical intimacy, and all of the good things that come from touch, serotonins and all those happy brain chemicals. And then there's the sex, which has the potential to be great. And then the emotional aspect of comfort and trust."

"Do you do the whole dating app and casual hookup thing? I feel like that would help with the physical side."

"Ugh, no."

Scorpius internally heaves a huge sigh of relief, and asks, "Can I ask you why? Not as a judgmental question, I'm totally onboard with this, but it's not like sex is hard to come by these days."

"I guess I want both at the same time. Is that too much to ask? I would only have sex with someone who I already trust and get along with, not someone who's gonna give me weird random diseases and be gone in the morning."

"Okay, I understand the physical aspect. But I know you have a good number of close friends. Can't you confide in them?"

"Well, yes. But I also just feel strange unloading on just one friend. Especially since almost all of my friends are in relationships of their own. So I guess I end up spreading it out. But I guess I want just one person to really _know_ me, you know? It would go both ways, obviously, but when I talk to different friends about different things, I feel a little spread out and broken."

"Er, just to make sure, you are happy in your own skin right now, right?"

"Oh, yes, it's not like a, 'I wasn't a whole person until I met you,' situation. It's more of I feel like my own person, but spread out too thin over different friends who see different aspects of me. I want just one person to see all of me." And if we're being completely honest, you, Scorpius, are probably the person closest to that right now.

* * *

(4)

"Do you still go home to stay with your parents every other weekend?"

"No, it's not as often any more. I'm trying to find things to do out here."

"What have you found so far?"

"I tried doing some outdoor activities when I first moved out here in the summer. Hiking, and Quidditch, but most of the people who I met at the organized events are young families. None super looking into pseudo-adopting a twenty-something.

"I gave up on outdoor social activities a little bit, and mostly just go for runs by myself, and I started cooking. But I guess I hit the social jackpot, or as close as I am going to come to it, when my apartment complex hosted a mixer, and I met a couple students who are our age from the Morian School of Mines. They're interning out here, but just for a year. We've started hanging out a little. Games nights, trivia nights at the local pub, and sometimes we go out to see Muggle sportsball games."

"That sounds like a lucky find! And you were all living in the same place for a bunch of time before meeting each other?"

"Yeah, it seems really silly now that I didn't really know my neighbors."

"I don't blame you! It feels strange to just walk over with a plate of cookies these days."

"What about you, Rose, are you still playing tennis with that local league?"

"Yeah, and there's a witch who grew up in California who I've gotten to be better friends with. Her name is Eileen, and we've been hanging out. Occasionally some of the Muggles in the league also will invite us to events, and it's pretty interesting to have also a Muggle friend group. We haven't inducted any of them to magic yet, so Eileen and I have gotten into a couple close calls with them when we're out hiking and know that we can make things more bearable with a little magic."

* * *

(5)

Rose is home for a week during the summer and has been helping her father with maintaining the house and the yard and working on some of her own craft projects. Scorpius is having a busy period at work, and Rose hasn't heard from him recently. That is, until she wakes up to a text from him.

S [0123]: Why in the name of Merlin can I not fall asleep tonight?!

R [0845]: Why _were_ you awake at that absurd hour?

S [1034]: I guess I had four or five things on my mind.

R [1041]: Would you care to elaborate?

S [1045]: I'm reading the biography of Florean Fortescue, and it's just so fascinating how he took something seemingly so simple as making ice cream and turn it into a way to bring people together and still have a profitable business. My business certification exam is in a couple weeks, so studying is always on my mind. My buddy Pascal is having some girl troubles, it's an extension of the story that I told you last time you came home. And I had a really bizarre dream.

Rose counts four things. She wonders what the fifth was, and whether it was related to her. She hopes it was. Not least for the reason that she stays awake some nights thinking of Scorpius. But the logical part of her mind chides her romantic heart for jumping to such conclusions… but at the same time, Scorpius was never one to be vague with his words and his counting.

R [1048]: :o That's indeed a lot of things, and out of curiosity, what was your bizarre dream?

R [1048]: You're welcome to not elaborate.

S [1049]: I don't remember specifics, just that it was pretty weird.

R [1051]: Fair. How did you get to sleep in the end?

S [1054]: I picked up meditation recently so that's helped a bit.

* * *

(6)

Another night when Rose is walking herself home (because she's too drunk to Apparate) after going out with her tennis friends, she suddenly feels a bone-deep desire to cuddle up with Scorpius, but he's halfway across the world in a different time zone, so she has to settle for texting him:

R [0033]: u up?

S [0035]: yeah what's up?

R [0036]: walking home, can I call u

S [0038]: it's kinda late to be walking home rose :P

R [0040]: ik, answer the question

S [0041]: right now? sure

"Hi hi hi!"

"Hi, Rose. Did you have a good night out?"

"Yeeesss we went dancing at the usual place and they had concocted a holiday drink which was pretty tasty if I do say so myself."

"Gin?"

"Of course. I'm too old for tequila now, you know this."

After a beat, Rose prompts, "Enough about me. How are you?"

"Well, I was just getting up to go in for an early time point at work. But last night I went for a sportsball game with the Morians."

"Oh? And how was that?"

"Well, I went with the couple, and it was a little bit awkward."

"Not because you were third wheeling, right? You've hung out as three with them before."

"Yes, you're correct. So I had originally asked the one girl I told you about previously to go with me."

Rose feels a pang, but smaller than the time when he first talked about this other girl, and squashes the feeling by reminding herself that she has no claim to Scorpius. Outwardly she says, "Okay, so she declined and then you asked the couple?"

"Yeah. She said that she was planning to stay in tonight. So I went with the couple and we were just chatting in our seats, and guess who walks up with a date and sits three rows in front of us."

"NO."

"Yes."

"What a little…"

"Yeah."

"Man, this sounds awkward as all heck."

"Yeah, and there weren't really any other open seats, so we couldn't really move. So I spent like the entire game pretending I hadn't seen her and avoiding eye contact."

"Sorry to hear that happened to you."

"It's alright, I went for a beer with the couple afterwards."

"Wait, what? I thought you hated beer."

"Oh, yeah. Well, I don't anymore."

"What changed your mind?"

"I went for a brewery tour with the couple, and that particular brewery had a really nice nitro ale, and I guess that was my gateway beer."

"Oh man, this is so exciting, I'm excited for you!"

"I kind of miss having occasions to drink liquor, though. It's too backwoods out here for anything more than whiskey."

"We should fix that."

"Oh, no…"

"Twenty four shots for your twenty-fourth birthday, yo!"

"Um... Right. That's between all of the people who come, right? So I just need to invite more than 24 people..."

After a comfortable pause in the conversation when Scorpius clearly hears Rose cooing to her cat, he asks, "Rose, out of curiosity, why do you call me?"

"Because we're friends and I like talking with you."

"Er, actually, I was curious about right now. Why did you want to call me tonight? Is it because you feel safer knowing that someone is walking with you?"

And because he's given her a valid reason, she can just say yes (but also, "By the way, I've been home for a while," to which he replies, "I know, you've been talking to your cat."), and not tell him the entire truth, which would sound more like, "I'm still attracted to you, and I like the way I feel when I'm interacting with you, and therefore trying to maximize interactions."

* * *

(7)

Rose goes dancing on her twenty-fourth birthday with some of her colleagues and friends in the area, and over the course of the night, as people come and go from the party, they hand the birthday girl drink after drink, and by midnight, she is suitably trashed. And, in the culmination of months of half-jokingly, half-seriously flirting with one Steven Montoya from the tennis league, Rose pulls on his hand – which has been wrapped in hers for the last several hours – and kisses him.

If she had been less drunk, she would have been more conscious of a feeling like a bucket of cold water being poured over her. But even in her current state of inebriation, the quick, sloppy kiss doesn't feel right and she drops Steven's hand like it is a hot coal and saunters off in search of a bathroom. And when she comes back, she doesn't see him in the immediate vicinity, so she throws on her jacket and bids her remaining friends goodbye, and goes home.

Drunk kisses are for Sober Rose to sort out in the morning.

Unfortunately, Hungover Rose is the one to pick up her phone and read the message from Steven. It's remarkably noncommittal:

Steven [0809]: So…?

And in the following minutes where Rose collects herself enough to respond that they really ought to talk, she feels only a profound sense of disappointment in herself, as if she has betrayed Scorpius. Despite the fact that they're not together, despite the fact that he's shown no outward signs of looking at her more than a friend, despite the fact that they're all adults living in a time of sexual freedom, Rose cannot shake the sense that she's let Scorpius, the one person who knows her best, down.

This leaves only one valid direction for her talk with Steven to take, and Rose needs water, and deep fried potatoes, preferably with a heap of bacon on the side, to help her face that conversation.

* * *

(8)

Eileen [2057]: Hey, Greg and his boyfriend and I were gonna go dancing tonight, do you want to join?

Rose [2059]: Yes! What time? I was planning on hitting Brock's house party tonight

E [2105]: You know what, we just impromptu decided to also go to Brock's party. We can pick you up from there.

R [2113]: Lol, Brock, what a tool, but at least he's got good alcohol! Let's turn it up :)

The group eventually makes it to the club, and in a lull between dances, where Greg's boyfriend is refilling on drinks, Greg drops into the seat next to Rose, and leans close to her ear.

"Damn Rose, sorry that I'm like the biggest cockblock ever, all these beautiful people checking you out but they think I'm with you."

Rose throws her head back and laughs, a freedom of movement that is fueled by the copious alcohol running through her veins. But it's true that Greg's energy for dancing cannot be contained by his boyfriend who is just one human and has to be distributed across multiple people.

Greg scopes out the room, and shouts over the music to Rose, "So many beautiful people here. What's your type?"

Again Rose laughs, but this time it's a self-deprecating laugh. "Eileen says that I like strictly 'leading men,' but I guess anyone who's tall, blonde, and bad for me will do."

"For example?"

Rose nods across the space to a muscular young man wearing a red t-shirt, standing with his arms crossed, but two young women hanging on to every word he says.

"I think he's gay," Greg informs Rose.

"Oh," Drunk Rose manages to say, surprised, but only for a moment before she points her chin at someone else. He looks kind of young, but he's also pretty good-looking.

It takes Greg a couple tries to figure out who Rose is talking about, and in that time, the object of Rose's interest has also been looking around, and has made eye contact with Rose, who panics for a hot second. Single as she is, she doesn't know whether she wants to dance on someone, extremely drunk, not to mention what might happen after. Luckily for her, Eileen proclaims at that moment that she's tired and would like to go home, and Rose yawns in agreement, and their night ends quietly.

E [0921]: morning, rose, how's your head

R [1014]: ughghkdfjjf

R [1014]: wbu

E [1017]: yeah, same

R [1018]: but damn that was a good time

E [1021]: oh yes absolutely

R [1025]: I'm so happy you invited me, I didn't realize how much I needed that

E [1032]: how so?

R [1036]: I dunno, I guess I've just been feeling really low lately about how all of my friends are in or starting relationships, and here I am, still single with only my beautiful calico for company

R [1036]: and I'm in this weird headspace where it feels like no one wants to be with me

R [1037]: even if all the dudes were creepy last night, it was actually pretty nice to see them checking me out.

R [1038]: makes me feel a little less hopeless about the whole s.o. situation

And maybe she doesn't need to fixate on her non-relationship with Scorpius as the only promising thing in her barren wasteland of a love life.

R [1049]: cool story rose tell it again

R [1049]: thanks for putting up with my moaning about boys hahaha

E [1052]: sorrysorrysorry I hopped into the shower

E [1055]: brunch?

R [1056]: like you even need to ask, also please don't apologize for showering

* * *

A/N: The line about the ice cream was perhaps inspired by _Stay Sweet_ , by Siobhan Vivian, which is a very nice summer read about friendship and taking charge of one's own life. It's a little slow to get started, but once it does, it's quite satisfying. Plus, there's ice cream.


	11. Birthdaze

Alas there is no longer any plot, just eons of angst. For those of you who stuck with me this far, hoping to hear more about cell phones or dragons or anything interesting from the earlier chapters, you have my sincerest apologies.

I disclaim.

* * *

July 2030

"ALRIGHT SCORPIUS, I'M HERE, AND IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY. TWENTY-FOUR SHOTS FOR THE BIRTHDAY BOY AND HIS POSSE."

" _Rose_ ," Albus hisses. " _Pipe dOWN_."

"I WILL NOT!"

"Rose," Alice says in her 'reasonable doctor' voice. "We are in the middle of a residential neighborhood populated by young families. There are children who have probably already gone to bed. You're disturbing them."

Rose heaves a sigh.

"Very well. You've always been the sensible one. I feel safer knowing that you'll be at my side all evening. My heart pines for you when you're away."

"Rose, it's barely dark out. How are you already drunk?"

"I'm a lightweight baybee," Rose sings as she twirls on the sidewalk.

Scorpius, meanwhile, is standing in the doorway of his family's townhome, looking on bemusedly as he attempts to welcome his friends in to set down their overnight things before they set out for a night of debauchery. He's pretty sure that Rose hasn't had anything to drink yet, since he knows how atrocious her typing gets when she's even slightly inebriated, and they've been texting up until about two minutes ago with no glaring errors on her part.

Albus wearily pushes past Scorpius, mumbling something about, "I'm too tired to match Rose's energy right now."

Alice follows Albus in, and then it's just Rose and Scorpius left, and he asks her, "You're not actually drunk yet, are you?"

Rose only winks at him and conjures a bottle of liquor and two shot glasses, and Scorpius laughs and reaches for one as she pours.

Rose raises her glass and proclaims, "To the birthday boy!" at the same time that Scorpius toasts, "To friendships that have stood the test of time."

"Eye contact, yo, remember you gotta keep eye contact with the person you're toasting with, otherwise it's seven years' bad sex."

This gives Scorpius pause. "Oh man, I had forgotten about that."

Rose laughs. "Americans, so hilarious."

Nonetheless, when the two finally stop giggling about bad sex, they keep eye contact while downing their drinks, a moment that is, perhaps at this point, not very odd at all in how intimate it feels.

Rose interrupts the moment by burping and drawling, "Two down, twenty-two left to go!"

Then, more quietly, "It's really good to see you again, Scorpius," as she reaches out to hug him.

"It's been far too long," he responds, drawing her into his arms.

* * *

 _Three months earlier_.

"So I'm thinking about visiting my parents in late June or mid-July," Rose interrupts a lull in her phone conversation with Scorpius.

"I won't be around for June! It's the Greengrass family reunion," and Rose can hear the pout in his voice and can imagine the adorable way that his face is scrunching up. "But if you come in July we can go out for my birthday!"

"Oh that's right! I haven't been drinking with you in aaages."

"Since that night in Vegas."

"That's right! Dang, let's make it a hard to remember night that you'll never forget."

"Riiight."

"It's okay, Scorpius, you'll be with me, and if there's anything I do well, it's keeping it together enough to get home after a night out."

"Reassuring."

"Gosh, Scorpius, it's your birthday, you could at least be a little more excited about spending it with your old friends."

Silence.

"Besides, I don't know when I'm coming home yet."

That's blatantly a lie and Rose knows it as soon as it leaves her mouth. Summer is a flexible time for vacation time at her workplace, so she's definitely going to choose July. That much was decided as soon as Scorpius said his summer plans.

"You may not even have to deal with Drunk Rose."

A heavy pause in the conversation. Is it awkward? Rose feels it's become awkward all of a sudden, but if she doesn't say that it's awkward, then it isn't… Right? That's how that works.

But the maybe-awkward pause passes, and Scorpius seems to accept Rose's dithering to close that subject and they continue talking about all of the things, like what Scorpius wants for his birthday. (For her to come home, but he'll never say that to her face.)

* * *

Rose is resting with her head on Albus' shoulder in a booth at a bar with a dance floor. Rose is pretty sloshed, and Albus less so since he's trying to stay in peak physical form and he claims that, "Overimbibing affects my training for the entire week." They've been talking about going back to Scorpius' place and watching some trash telly before turning in for the night. One thing stands between them and this plan, though, and it is Scorpius. He is standing on the other side of the table, arms waving, and mouth moving, but Rose can't hear what he's saying over the music so she opts to rest with Albus for another hot second.

He abruptly stops gesturing and pulls out his phone, and pokes his tongue out in concentration as he tries to type a coherent message. Moments later they see a group message from Scorpius:

Scorpius [2333]: common yoi old farts letnus dance

Rose can't help but laugh, and the exceedingly pleasant memory of dancing with (read: being draped over) Scorpius in Vegas comes unbidden. It's enough to motivate her to heave herself out of her seat and try to drag Albus with her, but he resists, gesturing toward Alice, who is chatting up some of Scorpius' friends from uni. His message is clear: I'll stay with Alice, and you go have fun.

In response, Rose conjures a bit more water for Albus, gives his arm a squeeze, and then follows Scorpius out onto the dance floor.

Before she reaches him, though, a bro-y looking rectangle steps into her path and clamps one beefy hand onto her shoulder.

"Buy you a drink?" he slurs, breathing a heavy scent of beer and cigarette smoke into her face.

Since this is a muggle pub, it's likely that this person is also a muggle and therefore Rose should not overtly use magic to remove him. But she can use a charm that she's perfected to protect Drunk Rose from people like this, which she does, and she slips out from under his ham hand just in time to run directly into Scorpius' arms. She tows Scorpius away from the slightly bemused drunk dude and toward the other side of the dance floor, where she finally turns around and registers the expression on Scorpius' face. He seems to have adopted a small storm cloud.

Rose reaches up to lightly pat Scorpius' cheek, saying, "I'm a big girl and can protect myself. You wanted to dance, so let's dance!"

When this doesn't convince Scorpius back to his original exuberance from three and a half minutes ago, Rose reaches up to curl her hand around the nape of his neck and pull his ear down toward her. For exactly one hot second, she lets herself imagine tangling her fingers in his hair and kissing him, and her fingers tighten briefly before she reminds herself that, no matter how much she wants it, she can't risk breaking their friendship like this.

During this hot second, one of Scorpius arms has wrapped itself around Rose's waist, and pulled their bodies flush with each other, and he is gyrating with a bit more pep in his hips. Which is good. This is what she wanted. Rose has already forgotten what she was going to say, and she thinks that his renewed enthusiasm has negated the need, so she settles for the only coherent sentence she can manage at this time.

"Happy birthday, you dancing queen."

* * *

 _Three weeks earlier._

"Ick, Eileen, how do you stand this? Beet?! Kale?!" Rose scrunches up her nose while she tentatively takes a sip of her _grass_ smoothie and before shoving it away from her.

"It's good for you," Eileen says blithely, sipping delicately at her drink.

"I'd rather have something hearty and meaty after we play tennis," Rose grumbles, mostly to herself."

"Yes, I know, last week was your turn to choose a lunch place, and this week it is my turn. Now shut it and enjoy your healthy smoothie."

Since enjoying her blended grass clippings is beyond her realm of reason, Rose instead tries one of her air fried French fries, and sighs. She keeps her verdict ("Needs more grease.") to herself, and dunks the sorry excuse for comfort food into her biodegradable plastic container of house-made organic heirloom tomato ketchup, and starts considering hitting up In-N-Out on her way home. Their fries might be made of cardboard, but at least there's enough grease to lubricate her old joints.

Eileen interrupts her reverie by asking, "So, how's, what's-his-face. The one who you were thinking about when you made out with Steven."

"Okay, one, I did not _make out_ with Steven, it was a quick peck. And, two, his name is Scorpius."

"Oh, yes, thank you. How is your dear Scorpius?"

Rose sighs.

"It's okay, Rose, I am perfectly ready to press you for the juice. Which, judging from your reactions, there's a lot of today."

"Circe and Morgana, why are we friends again?"

"You love me, and you know it." Eileen bats her eyelashes coquettishly.

"Okay, okay," Rose concedes. "You're right. I do love you and I'm thankful to have you."

"When are you going to say that to your darling Scorpius?"

Ignoring this, Rose manages, "So my visit home is going to overlap with his birthday."

"Mmhm. You say this like it was by design."

"Maybe. Anyways, we are going out for his birthday."

"Ooh, exciting. Drunk Feisty Rose and her longtime crush. This will end well!"

Rose sighs.

"Hang on, let's back up a step. How do you feel about this?"

"Well, there's one more little piece of information you might like to know. We are staying the night at his parents' townhome, because we anticipate being too drunk to get anywhere safely."

"OH HOT DAYUM. THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY."

"Something like that. I worry about Drunk Cuddly Rose and breaking our friendship."

"But at the same time, this might be the push that you two need to move past being friends."

"Sure, but…"

"What are you gonna do about it? Is it just going to be the two of you?"

"I was considering warning him about Drunk Cuddly Rose in advance, but I don't want the night to start off on an awkward note. And, as of right now, we haven't talked about other people coming? But I know it would be easier to stay away if there are other people around."

"Alright, those both sound like good options. What's the worst that could happen if you do make a move?"

"I don't want to go through another period of not speaking to him." Rose has filled Eileen in on her entire questionable history with Scorpius, so she knows what Rose is referring to.

"So don't."

"What? How?"

"You're an adult, you can use your words. Talk to him afterwards. Just like with Steven, you guys are basically on speaking and flirting terms again."

Rose groans.

"What? Am I wrong?"

"Enough about me. Thanks for entertaining my insanity. But what about you? What's up with you and Kei? You guys hang out. All. The. Time."

* * *

Eventually, Alice tells the group that she has to get to bed, because she has work in the morning. So the four of them stagger out of the bar, Alice with several phone numbers from Scorpius' uni friends and leaving promises to hang out again some other time, Rose and Scorpius draped over each other and hoarsely braying lyrics to the last song that was playing before they walked out, and Albus tailing behind the group, herding cats like the Responsible Parent that he will be very soon.

Back at the house, Albus and Alice turn in pretty quickly, but Rose and Scorpius exchange a glance, and Scorpius jerks his head at the television set.

"Have you seen the latest episode of that show?"

"No, want to watch it?"

"Yes, let's!"

Rose stretches out across the sofa, and gets cozy by tucking her feet underneath the cushions to warm them up.

Scorpius looks at her. Looks at the couch. Looks at the rocking chair. Takes one step toward the rocking chair, but Rose interrupts his slow progress.

"Merlin, sit on the couch."

"What? You've taken up the entire space."

"No, there's plenty space."

"Where?"

Rose scoots down the couch, so that her knees are bent, and there's space for Scorpius to sit next to her head.

And looks at him again.

And continues looking at him until he gives a miniscule smile and steps toward the couch, plopping down and settling into the couch. Once he's done this, Rose scoots back up the couch and puts her head into his lap.

Scorpius freezes for a second, but relaxes as the opening credits give way to characters arguing and having shenanigans. They're both drawn into the drama, and Scorpius' fingers are playing lightly with Rose's curls.

She doesn't recall anything that happened in that episode.

* * *

 _Two nights earlier._

"Hello?"

"Hey, Rose, it's Scorpius."

"Oh, hi! Happy actual birthday! Sorry, I got caught up watching the weather channel with my father, he still calls it divination, and my mother really hates that subject and calls it fakery so they got into a rather one-sided shouting match with the telly and, well, I had forgotten that I was supposed to call you, I'm sorry, but oh my Merlin thank you for saving me from that nonsense… I think I still hear them going on downstairs." She holds the phone away from her face, microphone pointed in the direction of "downstairs," but Scorpius' muffled voice on the line prompts her to reunite her ear with her phone.

"Yeah, sorry, can you say that bit again?"

"I was just saying that I invited a couple of my mates from uni, but most of them say they'll meet up with us after dinner. Is there anyone else you'd want to invite?"

Rose supposes it was a little too much to hope to have him all to herself on his birthday, when he has no idea of her ulterior motives… But she keeps it together to respond, "Scorpius, it's your birthday, your party, your guest list. Wait, what about Albus?"

"Oh yeah, I had forgotten about him! We put him through a lot during that trip. Yeah, I'll definitely ask him."

"I'm having trouble getting ahold of him, and we're family. I wonder what's up with him and Vivian these days."

"Hmm, think he'll invite her?"

"Maybe, but I doubt she'd come. She's even more of a homebody than he is, and he even has trouble getting her to come out to Weasley clan events. Grandma Molly is, well, a little skeptical."

"Okay, I'll still invite Albus, it sounds like it would be nice for both of us to catch up with him. Any other Hogwarts classmates?"

"How about Alice?"

"Sure, you ladies were really close in school, right?"

Rose is somewhat surprised that he noticed, much less remembered, but she speaks her assent.

"Alright, then that's settled. So, how are you, Rose?"

"You know, things are not bad. I've been over to see both sets of grandparents and they're feeding me up a storm, I swear I've gained a couple kilos just in the last week or so."

Scorpius interrupts by laughing, not unpleasantly. "Have I ever told you how jealous I am of your relatives who can cook, and cook well?"

"Once… Twice… Maybe three times, maybe fifteen." Rose's tone is light, teasing.

"And how's that kid brother of yours?"

"Hugo's around, he's starting out at his job and trying to make a good impression by staying late, but I think he's gonna be great once he gets into the swing of things and his bosses see that he's more than just the progeny of war heroes."

They continue in this vein (which is, no vein at all) until there's a long pause on Scorpius' end.

"Sorry, that was my mum, she says dear old Aunt Daphne is on the house line and wants to talk."

"You should probably take that, then…?"

"Yeah. See you in a couple days, Rose."

* * *

Rose must have fallen asleep watching the show, because even before she opens her eyes, she can tell that light is streaming in through the windows. She takes stock of her position: she seems to still be on the couch but tucked under a blanket with her head on a couch cushion. A fuzzy memory comes back to her of the episode ending and Scorpius jostling her, trying to talk her into bed but her resisting and snuggling deeper into his lap.

And now she's here.

She hears the reason that she woke up – footsteps in the next room, and all of a sudden she remembers that Alice needed to go in to work early today, and in the absolutely least smooth motion she's ever executed in her entire life, she tumbles off the couch and does a half somersault to a toppled over position with her cheek in something soft and warm.

She hears slow applause and cracks an eye to realize that she's landed smack in Scorpius' stomach. He looks like he slept on the floor, but, what, there were enough beds to go around for the four of them…

"Scorpius, why didn't you sleep in a bed like a normal person?"

"Man, Rose, you sound like a chain smoker."

"Shut it. You do too."

"And I was too tired after that episode to walk more than a few steps." Lie. He wanted to sleep with her.

"Oh, fair. Should we go say goodbye to Alice?"

They find Alice in the kitchen, preparing a mug of coffee. From her raised eyebrow directed at Rose, Rose knows that Alice saw them sleeping next to each other in the television room. But Rose shrugs it off as a conversation she doesn't want to have in front of Scorpius, and the three make small talk before Alice heads out.

As soon as the door closes, Rose yawns and turns back toward the couch. After spending the night on it, she has to say that it is pretty comfortable and envisions a couple more hours of sleep on it. She plops down on it with her feet tucked between the cushions again, and looks expectantly at Scorpius, who doesn't need prompting this time to take a seat near her head, and Rose curls up contentedly at his side.

Unfortunately, Rose is just drifting off when Albus wanders down the stairs, saying something about getting home to Viv for brunch.

"She's making shakshuka, and hers is my absolute favorite."

The fireplace is on the same wall as the television, so Albus shoots the two of them (they haven't moved from their cuddle) a funny look before shouting his address and disappearing in a burst of green flame.

Rose stretches against Scorpius' leg.

"So much excitement, I don't know if I can get back to sleep. But with Albus' talk of brunch, I'm realizing that I could eat. Potatoes?"

"There's a cute little muggle café down the street from here that does a really excellent Western brunch."

"Oh man, have those barbaric American customs made it all the way to the motherland?"

"Sad, but true. Actually, not that sad. I find it pretty tasty. And they do a really excellent French toast."

"Let's go, then."

After a truly excellent (and full of twice-cooked potatoes) brunch, and some haggling over who's paying (Scorpius paid in the end, because Rose paid for drinks the previous night, and protested that she did it because he wasn't supposed to pay for drinks on his birthday), the two of them find themselves with a couple hours before Scorpius returns to spend the rest of the afternoon with his family, and Rose meets up with Hugo.

"What's there to do in town today?"

"Want to walk around the harbor and just look around?"

"Sure."

"Even though I've just eaten, I could really go for a bowl of clam chowder."

It turns out there's a Latin fair on the harbor, featuring food stalls and artists, and Rose's eyes light up when she sees.

"Oh man! Flavorful food! Let's go!"

And without waiting for his response, Rose plunges into the crowd. She slows only a little when Scorpius tugs on her sleeve, and she drops one hand behind her, as she has previously done many times with her girlfriends at clubs. But Scorpius is not a girlfriend, and when he takes her hand, it's electrifying. When he laces his fingers with hers and gives her hand a squeeze, she knows she never wants to let go.

But they have to let go, to eat their seafood paella, and when they part ways for the day. They still haven't talked about the cuddles, or the hand-holding, but if that's all Rose is going to get before they part ways to opposite ends of the world for another year and a half, she'll cherish this day.

Maybe Scorpius will too, if his good-bye bear hug that lasts a little longer than if they were _just friends_ is anything to go by.

* * *

A/N:

1\. "Night That You'll Never Forget," by Love and Theft.

2\. "That show" is "Camp Camp," "RWBY" or "You're The Worst." Take your pick.

3\. They might actually Do The Thing That We've All Been Waiting For in the next chapter. Stay tuned!


	12. Nothing and Everything

I disclaim.

* * *

October 2030 – April 2031

"Do you remember that time we talked about going on another trip together?"

"Um, no, but I'd be down."

"Morgana's tits, Scorpius, how could you not remember?" Rose is smirking in their video chat, so Scorpius knows she's teasing. It's all she can do to control the flutter in her heart at his instantaneous agreement. "We talked about it for all of one split second while we were trash drunk on your birthday." But Alice overheard so I had to spill all for her over coffee. She said that I should make you follow through on this offer. She hopes these extra sentences weren't evident in her expression. Scorpius has gotten far too good at reading her.

"Well alright, sounds like a binding contract to me."

"Great! Where and when do you want to go?"

"One question at a time. Let's start with when?"

"Right. I've taken on some new teaching responsibilities at the dragon training academy that my company runs, and I've got four weeks of vacation time over the Christmas hols and into January, or two weeks in April, or two weeks any time in the summer, it's a little more flexible since I'm just working in the field."

"April sounds good, I'm probably going to leave my job around then and take a little time off before I start at my new position in Guatemala."

"What! Hold on, back up. You're _what_ now?"

Scorpius laughs. "I'll tell you after we work out where we're going."

"So demanding," Rose pouts, but gets started brainstorming places to go.

They finally settle on Japan; it's a perfect time to view the blooming cherry blossoms. They'll follow the famous "cherry blossom front" as it moves north, and also make stops at shrines that are known to host old and powerful dragon spirits. And the rest of the time they'll spend on the rivers or the coast, learning about the fishing industry and maybe they'll even charter a fishing boat to experience it firsthand.

And when the topic of telling their parents comes up, Rose decides that they don't need to know who she's going with. They've both been legal adults for several years now, with international travel experience, and there is no need to revisit the last time that Rose's parents pressured them into bringing a third wheel.

* * *

Rose and Scorpius take separate Portkeys to Tokyo, where they plan to stay for a handful of nights before taking the Shinkansen to Kyoto and working their way back north.

When Scorpius wanders out of Wizarding Customs in the late afternoon, local time, he sees that Rose is waiting for him. Rather, he sees her curly hair slumped over a backpacking pack that he recognizes from their desert trip, although it is rather more worn than it was.

And when he sits down next to her, he senses a flicker of a personal ward which dissipates when her magic recognizes his. Slowly, Rose raises her head to gaze blearily at the intruder who passed her wards. She knows who it is; after all, she's the one who keyed her ward to allow only one person in. Anyone else, and they would have received a nasty lick of dragon fire – enough only to startle but not enough to cause permanent damage.

"Hbleftphscor," Rose greets, with a slow blink.

"Good evening, my dear. You're always so charming when you wake up. Also, you'll have to teach me that ward." He's wearing the trademark Malfoy smirk, but softer somehow, only for her.

"Mdafshuddup," Rose yawns hugely. "You'd think they'd've come up with a charm or a potion or something to help with jet lag by now. My brain thinks it's the wee hours of morning and I just want to go to bed."

"Lucky for you," Scorpius says as he digs around in an outside pouch on his bag, "I brought some Pepper Up Potion. Specifically for you. Should get you through to actual bedtime."

"Oh thank Circe, you're my hero with foresight," Rose says as she slumps onto his shoulder, reaching for the vial.

A heated moment hangs as she continues to lean on him and they brush fingers as the vial changes hands.

The moment passes.

Rose takes the potion, and stands up abruptly, extending her hand to Scorpius. He takes the vial out of it, and pushes it back into the pouch it came from.

Rose rolls her eyes. "Shall we get going, then?"

"Oh, I thought you wanted me to take your trash. Yes, let's go."

* * *

"So, tell me," Scorpius says to Rose as the lights small towns slide smoothly away on the train. "Why did you want to travel by Muggle means?"

"It's fast, it's convenient, you can see more of the country."

"That can't be your entire explanation."

"Well, most of the places we're going are tourist traps or big cities, or both. But train tracks are usually built through less affluent parts of the country, so it's a chance to see, kind of, a high-speed glimpse of the way normal people live. You could think of it as a supplement to the little towns we're going through."

"I hadn't realized that's something that you think about often."

"I was surprised last term with how much my students' background affected their ability to learn, so I realized I need to think about it more. And learn from my travels about the ways that different cultures approach learning."

A pause, then, "One of my students is Japanese, and he mentioned that his father works for Japan Rail – did you know they also have a Magical Integration department? They got started much earlier than the Americans with their cell phones, and I wanted to experience their state-of-the-art."

"Ahh. You've come full circle now. But tell me more about teaching!"

* * *

All of the wizarding travel guides that Rose and Scorpius had pored over suggested that camping near tourist destinations was out of the question, and instead suggested using Muggle accommodations; after all, Japan has a well-deserved reputation as one of the most efficient nations in the world. Therefore, they had booked a series of business hotels.

"Tiny but with full amenities," most of the reviews read.

"Good enough for me," Scorpius commented.

"It's not like we'll be doing too much more than just sleeping and washing there," Rose added.

All of these statements and then some were running through Rose's head when she stopped short in the doorway of their room in Tokyo.

"Rose?" Scorpius sounds somewhat out of breath after having trudged up the narrow, steep stairwell to their floor. He's halfway through his motion of reaching out to knock on her head and ask, "Anyone home?" when he sees her reason for freezing. Perks of being tall.

There's exactly one bed in the room.

Granted, it's a double, and Rose has slept with Alice in a double bed before, but this is different. Alice isn't a boy, Alice isn't Scorpius, Rose hasn't got feelings for Alice. Feelings which aren't out in the open, but rapidly will be if they both sleep in _that_ bed, for better or for worse. And Rose can hardly ask Scorpius to sleep on the floor, because there's barely enough floor space for them to both set their packs down and have room to maneuver to the bathroom.

Rose takes a calming breath.

Then another. She's not going to panic.

Surprisingly, the thing that ends up working is gentle pressure on her shoulders. Scorpius is gently rubbing them, asking, "Rose? You okay? I can go downstairs and ask them if they've got another room…"

"No, no, Scorpius, stay," a voice says, and it takes a second for Rose to realize that it's her own. Even though she's been moving confidently through this country, the unfamiliarity is slightly overwhelming and it would be comforting to have Scorpius nearby.

Asymmetric pressure on her shoulders. Scorpius is trying to turn her around. She slides her pack off her shoulders and onto the ground to give her more maneuverability, and turns to meet his eyes. His eyes are questioning. Wordlessly asking if their friendship is going to be okay with a little sleeping in the same bed. Rose manages a weak smile, then leads the way into the room.

* * *

One hot shower later, Rose is feeling a little better. Still ready to go to sleep, but being in this tiny space with Scorpius and her pent-up feelings has got her itching to get outside. While Scorpius is taking his shower, Rose is browsing things to do by night.

When he emerges, damp but decent, she asks, "Shall we get some food and see the cherry blossoms all lit up?"

"Sounds good. Where to?"

"Well, we're just a few steps away from Ueno Station – there seems to be a good deal of food options around there, and the park also lights up their cherry blossoms at night."

Scorpius grins. "Look at our impeccable planning."

* * *

It's impossible not to get caught up in the romance of the cherry blossoms. Despite the street food vendors hawking their snacks, the cherry blossom-lined path is peaceful, people strolling slowly, with benches along the way for sedentary viewing. Rose and Scorpius get some sideways glances for their obviously not-Asian looks, but they're hardly the only ones, and continue unmolested. It's just a couple minutes of walking side-by-side before they bump shoulders with each other, brush hands, and as if drawn by an inexplicable magnetism, lace fingers through the other's, and not-so-surreptitiously sneak fond glances at the other.

In one of these glances, Scorpius nods his head toward an unoccupied bench.

They spend the next undefined amount of time seated on this bench, Scorpius' arm draped around Rose's shoulder, other hand holding hers, both lost in their own thoughts and hardly noticing the cherry blossom petals falling around them, in a fragrant blizzard.

And, come bedtime, without thinking or speaking, they scoot toward each other in bed and fall asleep wrapped up around each other.

* * *

The jetlag wakes Rose up in the wee hours of morning, and to her pleasure and her alarm, Rose is still lying in Scorpius' arms. An hour later, she hasn't fallen back asleep, hasn't moved from her position of staring at the ceiling, wondering what happens next. They slept together! But not _slept_ together. They're still fully clothed, haven't even kissed, and he's still breathing deeply, sleeping peacefully, with an arm draped over her midsection. Not wanting to disturb him, or the quiet contentment that's lurking somewhere behind her tumble of thoughts, Rose stays still.

What's the best way to say to her previously strictly platonic best friend that being in his arms is really nice and she wants to do it again… And maybe go further…?

"Do you ever think that _we_ … that our _thing_ from Hogwarts deserve a second chance?" No… too heavy for first thing in the morning. Also so vague. She would need to italicize her speech.

"I have a really irresponsible proposition for you." No, not that kind of proposition.

"It would be really irresponsible for us to start a relationship right now, but I want to." Circe's tits, this is getting really dark.

Amidst all her bickering with herself, Rose didn't immediately notice the change in Scorpius' breathing, signaling that he'd woken up. But she did notice when the hand draped across her midsection started rubbing circles lightly against her rib cage. That got her attention quickly enough, and she twitched.

"Rose?" Scorpius' voice is thick with sleep, like she's heard so many times before over the telephone. If she wasn't so distracted, she would have paid more attention to the way that she could _feel_ his voice through all the places they were still touching, thanks to his embrace.

"Rose, what's wrong?"

"Wrong?" Rose's voice sounds too high to herself. "There's nothing wrong."

"The stiffness of your posture suggests otherwise." His voice has gone slightly frosty. No, no, no, that's not what she wants at all.

"No, don't go, this is really nice." She hasn't moved her limbs to echo her words. "No, I was just thinking."

Scorpius has rolled over onto his stomach and is propped up on his elbows. Their legs are still touching under the blanket, but Rose already misses the feel of his arm around her waist.

"About?" he prompts when she's said nothing for a minute.

Rose sighs.

Well, might as well spit it out, then.

"About how much I _like_ you."

"What are we, sixteen?"

"Merlin's saggy left bollock, Scorpius, I was just confessing something deep here and you have to go and spoil it?"

"Rose, will you be my girlfriend?" Scorpius asks at the same time that Rose tries to resume whatever her train of thought was.

Train derailed. Understatement of the year. More like, train sprouted wings and started flying.

Rose splutters.

"Wait, what."

Scorpius looks at her expectantly.

"Surely it couldn't have been that easy."

"I guess I'll take that as a no…" Scorpius moves to get out of bed, but he's not moving very fast and his eyes are twinkling.

"Yes, you dummy, I'd love to be your girlfriend. Now come back here."

And he does.

* * *

Several hours of kissing and _other activities_ later, Rose is lying in the same position that she was in when Scorpius woke up. She's staring at the ceiling, but this time, Scorpius' face is buried in her neck and she suspects she's going to be well-decorated there when she looks. Later.

"You're thinking again," comes Scorpius' muffled voice, between kisses.

"You know me too well."

Scorpius moves so that he can meet her eyes.

"So tell me what you were thinking about when I woke up this morning."

Rose drags memories that have since been clouded by other happier memories out. "Well. Mostly enjoying the feeling of being in your arms." This earns her a kiss.

"And wanting the feeling to last forever, but wondering if it would be really irresponsible -" Scorpius snickers at this, "- shut it, you. You know what I mean. We live thousands of kilometers apart and you're starting in a new position in a new city where there will be more young people than there are in your little Farmville, so I didn't want to tie you down when you have this new opportunity -"

Here Scorpius cuts her off completely with another breathless round of snogging.

When they finally come up for air, Scorpius says, "Maybe I haven't been completely honest with you."

Rose freezes.

"No, silly, there's no one else for me but you. Haven't the last, what, several minutes –" he checks the time and has the decency to look surprised, "- well, several hours convinced you otherwise? I guess I've been leading you to believe that there haven't really been any dating opportunities for me, which is not exactly true. I do hang out with some people our age. Some of the women even flirt with me. I tried flirting back, a couple times, but, well, every time, I would just think about how you wouldn't put up with that sweet talk that was giving me cavities and how you'd sass me, and don't you see? You're in my head, and I can't get you out, but I don't really want to."

Every time something big like this comes out, Rose learns more about Scorpius' body, and he about hers, and she's decided that she'll never get tired of these earth-shattering secrets. Seriously. She feels like her world is falling apart and being reassembled every time.

"So what I'm trying to say," he continues conversationally, still connected to her, "is that there's no one else for me. How would there be? Why should I take the time to make friends with someone entirely new when I have the perfect woman in my arms right now?"

Rose hums in response, more or less having forgotten how they arrived at this topic. Not that it matters.

"And if you're worried about long distance, it's never been a problem for us before. We call each other often enough, and text the rest of the time."

Oh. Serious talk. Just when Rose was trying to enjoy this thing that she's wanted for years. She hides her face in his chest, and grumbles something incoherent.

"Rose, look at me."

He has to do all of the moving to achieve his request, but he holds her eyes with his own, and says, "Rose, you said you wanted to do something irresponsible. Well, I want to do this right and prove to you that it's a good move for us."

 _Us_. There's an _us_ now. Rose doesn't think she'll ever get used to this.

"You lead with your mind and not your heart. I know that now, and I want to start us out on the right foot.

* * *

A/N: :3


End file.
